Love Bug
by MotorcycleChickenSmile
Summary: His life had changed. He had things that for years he'd only dreamed of having; a real home, a place on top of the cake, and most of all, a best friend. But there was still one thing he didn't have, one thing he still dreamed about. A new game appears in the arcade, and Ralph thinks he may have found what he was looking for - but if he has, will he be able to handle it? COMPLETE.
1. Prologue

A/N: Oh. My glob, you guys. Oh. My glob.

For any of you who may have read my stuff before, or been justifiably furious with me for not finishing my Alice in Wonderland story ( which, and I just want to get this out of the way right now . . . will probably _not ever _be continued . . . I'm sorry ), you know that this is my first appearance on FanFiction in about _four years. _The truth is, after burning out on Dreams of a Memory I had resigned myself to permanent fanfiction retirement. But then . . .

Then . . .

Wreck-It Ralph. Wreck-It Ralph, you guys.

I'm geeking and gushing over this movie like I haven't over any movie in a _long, long time. _I've got WIR fever and it's gone straight to my fingertips, compelling me to come out of retirement and take a crack at a new story. Here is the prologue. This is planned out as a fairly big multi-chapter, so let's hope I can keep the steam up and update the darn thing in a timely manner . . . just so you know, _reviews _will encourage me to work faster!

It's good to be back, kids. I hope you enjoy!

Token Disclaimer: I own nothing. Like literally, absolutely nothing. No characters, copyrighted concepts or other trademark products that may weasel their way into this thing.

_**Love Bug**_

_Prologue_

"I'M GONNA WRECK IT!"

As soon as he heard the electric buzz of those familiar words and looked up, the ten-year-old boy stopped sucking on the straw of his Slushee. He paused with his hand hovering over the joystick, narrowing his eyes confusedly at the glass screen of the old Fix-It-Felix console. He scrunched up his nose, leaning forward to peer closer at the pixilated figure in overalls. He pushed his glasses up with two fingers and blinked.

"What the . . . ?" he mumbled, tilting in so closely his nose almost touched the glass.

Was . . . was the wreck-it guy smiling? That couldn't be . . . he had played this game a hundred times, and he had never seen the wreck-it guy smiling. He reached out his free finger to tap the glass, then suddenly he blinked, and the game screen was back to normal. The bad guy was glaring his regular bad-guy-glare, and had jumped up and started pummeling the building with his giant monster fists, roaring and smashing windows. The boy stuck out his bottom lip thoughtfully, wondering if he'd just imagined it. He shrugged and settled his hands over the controls, ready to concentrate. The wrecking guy was at the top of the smashed building and the little people were all crying out from their windows.

"Fix it, Felix!"

With his regular blipping sound, Felix jumped out of the right-hand screen, holding up his golden hammer.

"I can fix it!"

The boy grinned, hunched over and psyching himself into the game-play. Felix jumped up onto the first ledge, and the wreck-it guy roared and tossed a brick his way.

"Come on, big dude, show me what you got," the boy muttered out of the side of his mouth, his left hand expertly swiveling the joystick and his right rapidly punching the jump button. Felix blipped and bleeped as he hopped from ledge to ledge . . . the boy had played this game a _hundred _times, and somehow it never got any less addicting, even though he'd gotten so good at it he never lost anymore. In less than a minute, it was over. The building was fixed, Felix was on the roof, surrounded by the fat little townspeople, and the wrecking guy was . . . .

The boy blinked in disbelief did a double take at the screen, nearly knocking his Slushee off the console.

The wreck-it guy was standing on the roof next to Felix and the little people, his huge arms hanging down in defeat just like always, but . . . he was _smiling! _The boy's mouth opened quizzically as he stared at the pixel face that was supposed to be in a pouty little frown, but instead, was grinning from one 8-bit mutton chop to the other. He grinned while the little people from the building hoisted him up in the air and carried him the edge of the building, and there, just before they were about to toss him off . . . _he turn and looked at the boy._

The boy jumped in shock and jolted back from the game console. He quickly whipped off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt, but even after he put them back on, the wrecking guy was _still _staring straight at him! Not only that, but the people weren't throwing him off the building like they should be; they were just standing there, almost like they were holding him up so he could look at something . . .

His jaw hanging in confusion, the boy realized that the pixel eyes weren't looking at _him . . . _they were looking _past _him, at something behind him. He whirled around, but there was nothing there . . . nothing but the other game consoles. There was the old beat up Whack-a-Mole game, some dumb Bass-Fisher game, there was . . .

And then, a bright flash of something green caught the kid's eye. It was only there for a split-second, but it was _there, _he was _positive . . . _one of the characters in that kooky pink racing game had blipped onto the screen. She had only been there for half an instant, but he could have _sworn _he saw her flash the thumbs up in his direction . . . in the _wrecking guy's direction . . . _before disappearing again, leaving nothing behind her but the first-person camera play screen scrolling down the candy racetrack.

The boy whipped back around to look at Fix-It-Felix Jr. just as the ham-fisted wrecking guy was tossed off the roof of the building. He _arrrrghed _in frustration, just like he always did, before landing _splat _in the mud . . . just like always.

The boy stood there, rooted to the spot, watching the _congratulations _screen flashing in front of him. Felix had his medal, the game was over . . . in a few seconds it was back to its automatic screen, flashing for more quarters. The boy blinked, his mind racing. It . . . no, it was impossible. He couldn't have just seen what he thought he saw. It made no sense, it . . .

"Closin' time, chief!"

"Aaauugh!" the boy shouted in surprise and jerked around as a hand suddenly reached out and gave him a friendly tap on the shoulder. Mr. Litwak, the owner of the arcade, stepped back and held his hands up apologetically.

"Whoa, I'm sorry, son! Didn't mean to scare you there."

The boy gulped and took a deep breath to steady himself. "Muh . . . M-Mr. Litwak," he gasped, breathing hard. "I saw . . . I saw . . . I mean, I _think . . . _I think I saw . . . the, the little dude . . . the wrecking dude, in the game he . . . he was . . . h-he . . . and, and her! In that game! She . . . !" he pointed at the candy racing game,and his mouth flapped silently, but he couldn't seem to get the words out.

Mr. Litwak looked over his shoulder at Sugar Rush, then back over at Fix-It-Felix Jr., then raised one eyebrow quizzically at the boy. He waited a few seconds, then shrugged and good-naturedly patted him on the back, trying to steer him as nicely as possible towards the arcade doors. He reached back and nabbed the Slushee cup from the Fix-It-Felix console top and pushed it back into the boy's hands.

"Think you might want to take it easy on the sugar there, partner," Litwak chuckled. "Thanks for playing, and have a nice night now!"

The summer sun was just beginning to set, and a lazy orange glow was beaming through the wide arcade windows. The boy stammered as Litwak opened the door for him and propelled him gently outside.

"But . . . but . . . th-the _guy! _The _wrecking guy! _He's . . . !"

"Come on back now!" Litwak smiled and shut the glass door in the boy's face, turning the key in the lock and flipping the sign to _Closed. _He gave one last thumbs and turned away, shaking his head chuckling to himself at the dumbfounded expression on the boy's face.

_These kooky kids . . . the stuff they come up with to try and play past closing time . . ._

On the other side of the glass, in the little night-time world of Fix-It-Felix Jr., the Nicelanders were congratulating each other on another day's work as they filed back down the roof top staircase and into the penthouse below. They were so excited and hasty to begin their preparations for the night that they actually forgot to fawn over their hero for once, leaving him standing alone on the rooftop with his gold medal hanging around his neck.

Felix smiled, twirling his golden hammer once in the air before sticking it back in his hip holster. Straightening the bill on his blue cap, he strolled jovially to the edge of the building and looked down over the edge.

"You alright down there, partner?" he called in his bubbly, trademark tone of buoyant friendliness.

Far below him, an enormous, mud-splattered hand answered him with a thumbs-up, followed by a lightly smiling, mud-splattered face and head of dirty, rust-colored hair. Wreck-It Ralph pushed himself up on his huge arms, spitting out a small glob of mud and rising to his feet. As he wiped the mud off his face and the front of his tattered overalls and lumberjack t-shirt, he squinted up at Felix, grinning down at him from the edge of the roof. Ralph shrugged and grinned back.

"It's a living, right?" he joked.

"That it is, brother!" Felix saluted him with two gloved fingers, then winked. "Mind if I take the shortcut down?"

"Nah, go for it," Ralph waved him off.

"Alrighty! Here I come!" Felix held his shoulder with one hand, stretching it with a windmill motion, then stepped up onto the building ledge, and _bleep! _hopped over the side. He tumbled down in a barrel roll, landing at the bottom with another _blip! _straight into Ralph's outstretched, waiting palm. Ralph set Felix down on the ground and saluted him back with two huge fingers.

"Obliged as always!" Felix chirped as the two of them walked toward the front of the Niceland apartment building. "Say, Ralph . . . are you _sure _I can't persuade you to make an appearance at the party tonight? You know that everybody's going to miss you somethin' fierce, friend!"

Ralph did a slight double-take down at Felix's hopeful smile. Even after a whole year, he couldn't help but still marvel at how it felt to have friends in his own game, to have a friend who was the _hero _of his game . . . to actually be _invited _to a party, to be told that he would be _missed _at a party. Looking down at Felix now, the comical ratio of their sizes magnified by standing right beside each other, it was almost hard to imagine that there had ever been a time when they weren't friends . . . when the tiny repairman had even _intimidated him. _Ralph smiled, the warm feeling that still came up whenever he reflected on his new life flooding every inch of his huge barrel chest.

"Thanks, Felix, really . . . but I think you'll just have to give everyone my regards. I'm afraid I have a prior engagement."

Felix sighed his almost school-girlish sigh and smiled resignedly. "I understand. You know . . ." he said jokingly, leaning over to elbow Ralph in the ribs ( or rather, elbowing him in the side of his leg, as it was the highest point he could reach with his elbow ) " . . . if it weren't such a special night, I'd be tempted to give you a little talking-to about keeping in character in front of the players. I think your happy face tonight gave that poor boy a bit of a start."

Ralph rolled his eyes and gave Felix a friendly punch on the shoulder, holding back as much force as he could but still knocking his pint-sized protagonist flat on the ground.

"Yeah, I'd like to see you try and give me a talking-to."

Felix laughed at took the finger Ralph offered him, lifting him back to his feet. "You just take care not to party too hard tonight! I don't want to have to wheelbarrow you back home from Tapper's to get you to work on time again!"

"No worries, it's gonna be a small, private affair. Nice and quiet," Ralph assured him, letting just one little white lie slip through his teeth as he lumbered toward the tiny train running in and out of Fix-It-Felix Jr. "Have Mary save me a piece of pie for later!" he called back to Felix as he clambered into one of the tiny blue cars, rocking the train nearly off it's tracks. "Oh, and say hi to the Mrs. for me!"

Felix waved back from the front steps of the apartment building. "And you be sure to give my regards to Miss Von Schweetz! Happy anniversary, Ralph."

The train was just rattling into gear and heading out of the little station as Felix's words caught up with him, and suddenly Ralph caught himself turning just the faintest shade of red at the mention of he and Vanellope's anniversary. Even after one full year, he couldn't quite get used to it . . . having a friend. Having a _best _friend, someone who cared about him more than he had ever imagined that anyone ever would. Even if that someone was a hyperactive, sugar-faced little twerp with a tongue as sharp as her hairpin turns . . .

Ralph blushed again, and couldn't help but smile to himself as the Fix-It-Felix train lurched into the dark tunnel connecting his world with Game Central Station.

His one year anniversary with Vanellope.

There had been a time, not so long ago at all, when Ralph would have thought that there was no place in the world he'd rather be than up in the penthouse with the Nicelanders at one of their parties, eating cake, and dancing, and generally just not being made to feel like the _bad guy. _There was time he'd have traded anything for that.

The light at the end of the tunnel grew larger and larger, and finally the blue train chattered to a stop at the entrance gate to Game Central Station. Ralph pried himself out of the seat with some difficulty, then found himself setting off practically at a jog, suddenly eager to get to Sugar Rush as fast as he possibly could.

He'd found something he was more than willing to miss a Nicelander party for.

A/N: Welp, there she is. Hope the old fanfictioning skills haven't gotten too rusty after all these years. Also . . . and I sort of hate to do it . . . but I just want to say right now that this story is _not_ a RalphxVanellope romance. Some of you may want it . . . want it _bad . . . _but I just plain don't. So, if that's a dealbreaker on this story for you, happy trails, partner. Please leave a review!


	2. Chapter 1: Happy Anniversary Two, You

A/N; Aaaaand, here we have it. Chapter 1. Thank you all for reading and favoriting, I look forward to your feedback!

Disclaimer: Don't own nothin'.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 1: Happy Anniversary Two, You_

_S-U-G-A-R, jump into your racing car, say SUGAR RUSH! SUGAR RUSH! Hey!_

As soon as Ralph stepped through the gate onto the rainbow bridge, lifting his hand over his face to shield it from the permanent sunshine in this world, he heard the familiar poppy jingle of the Sugar Rush theme song playing from some untraceable point far off in the distance.

_Kanashiku nattara . . . mabuta wo tojite goran . . . hora yume no naka nara . . . namida wo wasurerareru . . . _

The warm, sugar-infused smell of the pink-tinted candy world filled him with an almost immobilizing feeling of nostalgia and deja-vu. Ralph paused for moment with his hands on his hips, cocking a lop-sided smile at the whole vast expanse of Sugar Rush. One of the reasons he had grown to love coming here was the sheer size of the place . . . at home, there was the penthouse building, the dump, a few trees and the apartment street. You could cross the whole world in practically a hundred paces . . . but _here . . . _Sugar Rush sprawled out so far that he couldn't see the end of it. The ice cream mountains looming palely on the horizon were so far away, he almost couldn't make them out. Sometimes Ralph wondered if there even _was _a real end to the game.

. . . _moshi koko de ensuto shittate . . . boku tachi wa awatetari shinai . . . amai mono demo ikaga? . . . . . . . S-U-G-A-R, jump into your racing car, say SUGAR RUSH! SUGAR RUSH!_

Ralph took a deep breath, rolled his head on his shoulders to stretch his neck, then set of at a brisk walk down the rainbow bridge, whistling the Sugar Rush theme song to himself without even realizing it. Vanellope had told him she would meet him there at the foot of the bridge, and as he came over the first hill toward the steep descent, he kept his eyes peeled for her. He smiled wider and sped up as he spied a dark spot waiting at the bottom of the rainbow hill. He raised one hand over his head and waved excitedly, but the spot didn't move.

"What's the matter with you, Princess von President?" he called out as he motored down the hill. "Royal life making you too lazy to even come up and . . . meet . . . your . . .?"

Ralph's voice trailed off as he came to gradual halt at the bottom of the hill. He narrowed his eyes and made a confused face, slowly approaching the thing that he'd _thought _was his tiny friend. He crouched down and looked at it, gingerly poking it with one finger, then breaking into a throaty laugh. It was a _cake . . . _a fondant-coated cake sculpture made up to look like Vanellope, complete with her little mint-colored hoodie and candy bits stuck in a ponytail that he now realized was made of black licorice.

"That little stinker," Ralph muttered, smiling to himself. "Just what does she expect me to do with . . . " Then, he spotted the little folded note that was stuck to the front of cake-Vanellope's shirt. Carefully, using the utmost tips of two giant fingers so as not the squash the cake, Ralph ever so gently plucked the note off, struggling for a few seconds to unfold it. Holding it up to his eyes, he squinted at the tiny, messy red handwriting that he recognized as Vanellope's, reading aloud to himself.

"'Dear . . . Stinkbrain,'" he read, rolling his eyes only for a second. "'This may be hard for you to believe, but . . . brace yourself . . . that is not me. That is, in fact, only a cake, made to resemble me.'" Ralph paused and made a face. _Never quit with the smart remarks, did she? _

"'After you have recovered from this shock,'" he continued. "'Look under the taffy tarp and bring what you find there to Diet Cola Mountain.' Taffy tarp? What taffy-"

Ralph looked up and his eyes instantly fell on a large sheet of blue taffy covering up a vague, oblong shape sitting ten feet behind the Cake-ope. Ralph cleared his throat sheepishly. "Oh. That taffy tarp." He went back to note.

"'I'm waiting there for you, so quit dragging your knuckles and pick up the pace, Pituitary Case! Vanellope. P.S. Happy anniversary, Ralph.'"

The warm fuzziness filled him up again as he read the last words. He turned the note over on his finger tip and noticed three more words scrawled on the back.

"'P.P.S . . . bring the cake.'"

Shaking his head in feigned exasperation, but unable to hide his huge grin, Ralph eagerly reached out and peeled the thin, sticky sheet of taffy off of whatever was hidden underneath it. He threw the tacky blanket over his shoulder and looked down.

His eyes widened. His smile vanished, replaced with silent surprise. He stared speechlessly for a minute, then lifted one hand to the chest of his T-shirt to gently touch the small parcel that he had stashed there in the neck of his clothes. In spite of the anxious embarrassment beginning to well up in the back of his mind, he couldn't help it . . . his smile crept back as he knelt down to take a closer look at Vanellope's gift to him.

It was a candy-kart . . . but not just _any_ candy-kart. This kart wasn't tailored to fit any pixie-sized inhabitant of Sugar Rush _. . . . _this kart was custom-made for someone nine feet tall, whose feet were too big to work pedals and arms were big enough to propel the kart along at break-neck speeds without any engine at all.

The kart was twice the size of the cars the other racers in Sugar Rush drove, and instead of side doors and a steering wheel, it had an empty space with nothing but a seat. The body was made of orange rock candy and the wheels were round red-and-white peppermints. Ralph leaned in close to read the writing that was etched into the side of the rock sugar fender.

_The Wreck-It Mobile._

For what felt like a long moment, Ralph just sat there, looking down at the kart . . . at _his _kart. He felt as if he might never be able to stop smiling again.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The Cake-ope sitting safely between his feet on the floor of the _Wreck-It Mobile, _his arms pawing at the ground in synchronized gorilla movements and pushing his kart along so swiftly that a billowing trail of cocoa dust bloomed up behind him, Ralph sped toward the secret crossed-lollipop entrance to Diet Cola Mountain. Hunching up his shoulders and lowering his head, he squeezed his eyes shut just as he was about to crash into the side of the mountain, and then . . . _fffzzzpt. _He fazed straight through and found himself barreling down a rocky tunnel toward the heart of the mountain. He never _had _quite been able to get used to that . . . things were a lit simpler in his game. No glitches, no secret passages, no hidden bonus levels.

Ralph slammed his hands down on either side of the kart, digging two long skid trenches into the ground with his fists and finally grinding to a screeching halt at the bottom of the descent.

Coughing lightly from the cloud of cocoa powder that billowed up around his kart and brushing his hands off on his clothes, Ralph looked around. The glow from the bubbling hot cola spring lit up the interior of the mountain, revealing Vanellope's candy garbage sanctuary, her home-away-from-home when life at the Candy Castle got a little too pompous for her . . . which, truth be told, was pretty much all of the time. In spite of her title, Vanellope had never really changed from the grubby little candy urchin she was when they first met, and the longer she had to carry out her duties as Madam President of Sugar Rush, the more she'd taken to retreating back to her Cola Mountain cave after closing time at the arcade. True, she'd spruced it up quite a bit from what it used to be . . . now, instead of just garbage, the cavern was littered with candy furniture lifted from the castle and strewn here and there in a helter-skelter monument to her incorrigible whims.

Now that he was actually there, however . . . the grubby kid was nowhere to be seen.

Ralph stood up in his kart, looking around in a full circle, wobbling slightly and balancing himself with his arms.

"Vanellope?" he called curiously. "You in here, kid?"

VRRRR_OOOOOOM, HHHRRVVOOOOOM!_

Ralph yelped in surprise and toppled backwards, landing hard on the seat of his kart and jerking in the direction of the sudden racket. His eyes widened as he turned just in time to see none other than Vanellope, speeding directly towards him in her own candy-kart, engine throttling at full blast.

"Brace for impact, Buttmaster!" he heard his friend's shrill, rhaspy little voice cackle maniacally over the roar of her engine.

"Whoa, _whoa, KID, WAIT . . ."_

KRRRRUNCH.

Without so much as tapping the brakes, Vanellope t-boned her kart straight into Ralph's. One second he was holding up his hands in reflex, thinking for a split second that maybe he could stop her kart before she hit him . . . the next, he was airborne.

Ralph felt himself sail twenty feet through the air and land with a dull THUDflat on his backside, then somersault backwards once and slam his back into a cola rock wall, the boulder cracking and giving way slightly at the impact of his heavy body.

He barely had time to open his eyes and sit up before a soft little cannonball smaller than the size of his fist rocketed straight into him, hitting him square in the stomach.

"_Ooof!" _he breathed, half doubling over as the air rushed out of him. His head swimming with dizzy stars, he shook himself and blinked, gasping for breath.

Vanellope, her whole body smoking like a burnt-out firework husk, uncurled herself from her hedgehog position and sprawled out on Ralph's stomach, gripping her tiny hands into his shirt and lolling her head dizzily up to look him in the face. Her hair was flying straight back, her big brown eyes covered by a pair of driving goggles. Her face was plastered with a huge grin, and she was giggling like a loon.

Finally catching his breath, Ralph just stared down at her dumbly for a moment. Obviously still regaining her wherewithal, Vanellope laughed out loud and pushed the goggles onto her forehead to look at him clearly, the bottom half of her face dark with soot. She grinned up at him unapologetically.

"Oh, dear," she giggled mockingly. "I must have had my eyes closed. I didn't see you there, Man Mountain."

Ralph scrunched up one half of his face, his mouth opening and pointing one finger at her as if about to scold her . . . but then, as he looked back into her beaming, dirty face, his shock and incredulity deflated, and he slumped back against the rock, laughing and laying one hand over Vanellope, holding her against his chest while he cracked up uncontrollably. Vanellope laughed along with him, smearing one balled up hand across her nose and punching him ineffectively on the shoulder. Ralph opened his eyes and saw that one flyaway tip of her bangs was on fire. He snorted with a fresh bout of laughter, his eyes practically tearing up as he licked the tip of his finger and pinched the flame out with a tiny _hisss_.

"You know, kid," he muttered in between breathless chortles, "Despite all the hype? You're actually kind of the lousiest driver I know."

Vanellope blew a raspberry and wriggled out from underneath his huge hand. "Like you know anything about driving, Lord Buttleroy!"

Ralph pulled himself to his feet, dusting himself off and smiling down at her. She beamed back up at him.

"I just hope you didn't wreck the Wreck-It Mobile before I had a chance to," he joked.

The two of them went back to the scene of the crass to assess the damage to their karts, which turned out to be minimal. Vanellope's cookie fender was cracked . . . a quick frosting patch job and it would bounce right back . . . but the Wreck-It Mobile had actually made it out without even a single scratch.

"Well duh, I designed it to be practically indestructible," Vanellope waved him off. "You're not exactly the kind of guy I'd trust with _delicate machinery."_

"Seriously, kid," Ralph lowered to one knee next to her. "I love it. It's the second best present I've ever gotten in my life."

Vanellope smiled, but raised one eyebrow at him knowingly. "Second best, huh?"

Ralph opened his mouth to answer, and then suddenly remembered the little package hidden in his shirt.

"Oh, man!"

Panicking briefly, he quickly pulled the small bundle out and inspected it, turning it over in his hands and feeling it for loose pieces. He exhaled with relief when he saw that it hadn't been broken in the "accident."

Vanellope noticed the package and perked up, inching closer to Ralph.

"Say, whatchya got there?"

Ralph jumped, looking back up at her. He suddenly found himself blushing. He scratched his head with his finger and slowly, hesitantly held the brown paper package out to her.

"It's . . . um . . . well, it's your . . . anniversary present," he muttered sheepishly, half looking away.

Vanellope looked at him silently for a second, then down at the package. She took it from his open palm, staggering a little with its weight.

"Geez, Ralph," she joked, setting it on the ground and kneeling down to unwrap it. "What did you get me, bricks?"

The moment she said it, Ralph went from a light honey-glow to full blown red in the face. When she noticed, Vanellope's smile vanished and she cringed guiltily, looking down at the package.

"Oh, Ralph, I didn't . . . I mean, I didn't mean to . . . " but she trailed off as she pulled back the last layer of paper and saw what was lying inside. Her voice choked up uncharacteristically and she picked up the heavy ( for her ) object with both hands, looking down at it like it was the most wonderful thing she'd ever seen.

"Ralph," she croaked quietly. " . . . it's . . . it's amazing."

In her hands was a six-inch tall figure carved out of a brick . . . one of the bricks from Ralph's old dump in Fix-It Felix-Jr. Using his fingertips, he'd pinched off chunks of the brick until it took the shape of a little girl with a ponytail, a skirt, and tiny hands and feet. Her eyes suddenly cloudy, Vanellope looked down at the second crude figure laying on the brown paper . . . a familiarly round guy with gargantuan arms lifted up over his head. She put down the Vanellope statuette and picked up the Ralph one, running her fingers slowly over it's knobbly, rust-red surface.

Ralph kept his face pointedly turned away, his cheeks still red with embarrassment and his arms folded tight over his chest. He cleared his throat sheepishly.

"I . . . I meant to get you something better, I don't know, something from one of the motocross games . . . maybe a helmet, or, you know . . . something you'd like, but I just sort of ran out of time, and . . . I mean, I had all these bricks, and I just sorta figured . . . "

"Ralph."

He looked up at the soft sound of her voice and saw her cradling the figurine to her chest, gazing up at him with an expression that made him feel like he was melting inside.

"This _is _the best present I've ever gotten," she whispered, smiling with unusual sweetness, unmarked by sarcasm or wit. Then, without warning, she set the statue back down on the paper and jumped like a cricket up onto Ralph's forearm, latching onto him.

"Happy anniversary, Ralph," she whispered.

Ralph froze for just an instant, then took her gently in his fist and hugged her back, his huge hands wrapping together around her and almost hiding her completely from view as she put her little arms around his neck.

"Happy anniversary, kid," he whispered back.

When they parted again after a few seconds, both of them suddenly feeling shy and embarrassed, Ralph quickly stood up and stretched his arms over his head.

"Whhoooo," he muttered, looking around the cave, trying not to look at his little friend, whose face . . . if he'd turned to see it . . . was also glowing just a little pinker than normal. "That kart you made me may be indestructible, but my _back _sure isn't. Maybe you should tone down some of the more _insane stunts _like that, kid."

Vanellope waved him off. "Ahh, don't be such a baby, _baby. _Here, have a piece of cake," she reached into his kart and pulled out the Cake-ope, staggering a bit with it and holding it out to him. "It's nooot chooocolate!" she promised.

Ralph shook his head and smiled, taking Cake-ope's arm between two of his fingers and twisting it off.

SPPPEEEEERLLLAM!

The second he pinched the piece of cake, it exploded. Frosting splattered across his face and the front of his shirt. He opened his eyes, blinking through the layer of icing with dumbfounded blankness.

Vanellope was instantly on the ground, rolling from side to side. "I . . . I c-can't believe it!" she cackled, practically gagging on her own laughter. "I can't believe I got you _twice! _Oh, that is rich! That is a _classic. _It's like _art."_

Ralph wiped the frosting from his eyes and gave her a suddenly devilish, lopsided smile.

"Oh, so you think that's funny, huh?" he growled, scooping up a huge mitt full of frosting from the pile of exploded cake on the ground and creeping up beside the little girl as she lay howling on the ground. "Well, how about _this?"_

In one motion, he pinned her to the ground on her back with one palm and plastered the frosting on her face with the other. Vanellope spluttered and thrashed around, now laughing so hard she was barely making any noise. Ralph grinned and began tickling her with the tip of his finger, still pinning her down.

"Oh, so that _is _funny? Tell me, why do you find it funny? Does it work on multiple levels? What, is my comedic timing getting better, huh? Tell me, please!"

"Stop it, Ralph!" Vanellope gasped between cackling gales of laughter. She squirmed from side to side, giggling uncontrollably as she fought to get away from his tickling fingers.

"Ha, no, I don't think that criticism is constructive enough," Ralph laughed, crawling forward on his knees and catching her with one hand as she tried to scramble away.

"No, Ralph, stop! Stop, I'm gonna pee!" Vanellope giggled. His shoulders shaking, Ralph finally stopped, falling back to sit on the ground and holding the recovering girl in his palm. It was nearly a full minute before she had calmed down enough to sit up and take regular breaths. Beaming brightly from behind her mask of smeared frosting, Vanellope jerked her thumb in the direction of the two candy karts.

"Come on, tough guy," she grinned. "Let's get this party started already."

A/N; Gaaaah, the fluff. So. Much. Fluff. Not entirely sure how happy I am with this chapter, but I am glad to have it finished so soon. If next chapter goes as planned, the stinking _plot _may actually make it's first appearance. Please, please leave a review and tell me what you think!


	3. Chapter 2: 'Tis Better to Have Pacced

A/N: Chapter 2! Ta da! I'm thinking I may stick with shorter chapters updated more frequently. Let me know what you think of this one, and enjoy!

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 2: 'Tis Better to Have Pacced and Lost, Than Never Pacced at All _

"Ok, ok, my turn . . . leeeet's seeeeee . . . . what . . . is . . . your . . . favorite . . . " Vanellope held her chin thoughtfully as she turned her head slowly back and forth, as if looking across the Sugar Rush night sky for ideas on what Truth-or-Truth question to ask next. " . . . _thing to smash?" _she finally asked, looking quickly at Ralph with excitement.

Ralph gave her a weird look, then groaned and massaged his forehead with one finger.

"What?" Vanellope shrugged.

Ralph sighed. "I think that pretty much falls in the same category as favorite things to _break, _doesn't it?_"_

"Wait, you didn't let me finish! What would be your favorite thing to smash . . . _if, _when you smashed it, _it begged for mercy first?"_

Ralph raised one eyebrow at her. "Seriously."

Vanellope's smiled dropped and she sighed, rolling her eyes. "_No. _But this is starting to get boring."

"Face it, kid, we're out of questions."

Vanellope stuck out her bottom lip, but looked away and nodded acquiescingly. They had started out playing Truth-or-Dare, but when it became apparent after a few turns that the only dares either of them could really come up with in Sugar Rush were to eat things off the ground, they had settled for Truths only . . . now, more than an hour later, it was starting to get old. They were sitting at the top of Diet Cola Mountain, at the very edge of the Mentos volcano cap. Their karts, each a little bit worse for the wear after hours of no-rules racing through rugged, off-road candy terrain, were parked nearby at the summit of the narrow road winding up around the mountain.

Submitting to the silence, Ralph and Vanellope each leaned back further against the cola rock to look up at the night sky.

"I gotta tell ya, kid," Ralph said presently, folding his arms comfortably behind his head as he gazed upwards, "I'm still pretty impressed. You put constellations in there and everything, like . . . like that thing," he pointed up at a cluster of stars, glowing pinkly in the purple-black sky. "That's like a snow cone or something, right?"

Vanellope squinted at him, then snorted derisively. "That's a kitten, Copernicus. Eh, it was no big deal, really . . . cross some wires, rewrite some code, smoke a few programming fire walls, and boom! Night sky in Sugar Rush."

They were quite for another moment, each admiring the effect of the darkness and moonlight on the candy landscape. Coming from a game where it was always nighttime, Ralph had to admit that he thought it was something of an improvement, if only a temporary one.

Vanellope yawned abruptly, stretching her arms over her head and smacking her mouth loudly before flopping over to lean against Ralph. He smiled quietly, pulling her more comfortable against his side, then resettling on the rock.

"Here's a truth or truth for you," Vanellope muttered brightly, her voice become tired and lilting. "Why are you such a lousy racer?"

Ralph gave a knee-jerk eye roll. "Same reason you're a baby-armed pygmy?"

Vanellope laughed once, jerking with her loud, characteristic snort. "Touché, truck-a-saurus. Ok, how about this one . . . what do you think the chumps in your game are up to tonight? Bet it's nothing as cool as hanging out with a Madam President."

Ralph chuckled. "Well, that goes without saying. Ah, by now they're probably winding down for the night, breaking out the slippers and Jenga."

Vanellope started to nod off, her head drooping down then jerking back up.

"Hey," Ralph nudged her in the shoulder with his fingertip. "Speaking of winding down, you look like you're ready for bedtime."

"I'm not . . . n-not tiiiiired," Vanellope protested, yawning each as she spoke. She rolled onto her side, using Ralph's arm for a pillow and snuggling down. "Wha' 'bout Felix and Sergeant Shouts-alot? Think they're into slippers and Jenga?"

Ralph opened his mouth to answer, then stopped suddenly as he realized he wasn't sure what to say. It had been almost a whole year since Felix and Calhoun's wedding ( he made himself a begrudging mental note to figure out _something _to get them for their anniversary ), but he sometimes actually found himself still forgetting that they were married. They had their own place in the Fix-It-Felix neighborhood, of course, and most nights after the arcade closed Ralph would catch Calhoun for a hello as she was arriving on the train, still wearing her battle armor from Hero's Duty and reeking of napalm . . . but truth be told, he didn't see them together all that often. Felix invited him over to their place often enough, but Ralph had felt uncomfortable in their small, cozy living room ever since he'd first gone to visit just after the wedding and accidentally broken their chandelier. He more or less stuck to meeting them at Tapper's now and then.

"Ffmmmaamph," Vanellope mumbled, half-asleep. She punched his arm half-heartedly to get his attention. Ralph snapped out of his reverie and cleared his throat.

"You, uh . . . you better get to bed, kid. You need some sleep before the arcade opens."

"Wha ya talkin bou, weef lossa time," Vanellope garbled, half-dreaming. "Don go yeh, havva nother drink." She hugged tighter onto Ralph's arm and snored once. Ralph smiled at her in spite of himself, scooping her up in one hand and carrying her to the go-karts. Cradling her carefully in one arm, he picked her kart up in the other and held it over his shoulder like a boom box, then balanced one foot in his kart and half skate-boarded down the winding mountain trail, dragging his free foot for brake turning on the sharp corners.

Back inside the Diet Cola caves, Ralph dropped the karts by the entrance and carried Vanellope to her bedroom cave, navigating carefully through a maze of wrappers and marshmallow beanbag chairs. Months ago Vanellope had arranged for a gargantuan sponge cake to be trucked into the cave so Ralph would have a place to crash there, but he rarely slept on it . . . he never told her, but the saccharine-smelling atmosphere of the game usually started to make him feel nauseous if he stayed there longer than a day or so. Funnily enough, after all these years, he'd actually grown partial to the musky smell of his dump back home.

As soon as he laid her down on her own bed, Vanellope rolled over and was instantly asleep. Trickily maneuvering her blankets with his huge hands, Ralph managed to give her a halfway decent tuck in, then stood back, folding his arms satisfactorily and beaming down.

It never really ceased to amaze him, how tiny she was when he really stood up and noticed. He could crush her with one flex of his fingers, and yet she crawled in and out of his hands like they were her personal elevator lifts, never even hesitating for a second. Never once had she ever been even the littlest bit afraid of him . . . not even before they were friends.

It never ceased to amaze him.

Suddenly, Ralph realized he'd been standing there staring for well over a minute and caught himself, turning slightly red and rubbing the back of his neck inconspicuously. He lowered one hand just over Vanellope, as if he wanted to pat her a final goodnight . . . then thought better of it and straightened back up.

"Happy anniversary, kid," he whispered, turning to walk away.

A small rustling sound behind him made his ears perk.

"Happy anniversary, Ralph."

He looked over his shoulder in surprise, then exhaled slowly. Vanellope was still fast asleep, rolled over with her face towards him now, her face calm and blank.

"Happy . . . nuh . . vrsry," she mumbled, her eyes closed.

Ralph stood there a moment longer . . . turned back to hide his glowing face, and left the cave.

When she was sure he had gone, Vanellope cracked one eye open in the direction he had been, and smiled to herself.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As soon as he passed through the gate at the top of the rainbow bridge and caught the first bright glimpse of Game Central Station, Ralph knew that something was wrong. The station, which was usually pretty deserted at this hour of the night, was brimming with characters from every game in the arcade, a huge crowd of them all pushing and jostling as if to get a better view of something. Ralph could hear the dull roar of their chatter before he even passed through the barrier. His eyes narrowing curiously, Ralph fazed through the gate barrier . . . _ffzzzt . . . _and was just about to open his mouth to ask a nearby Tekken ninja what was happening when . . . _inevitably . . ._

"Name, please?"

Ralph skidded to a stop, throwing an incredulous look at the surge protector.

"Oooh, come . . . come on, man! _Every time?"_

To his surprise, the SP actually looked up from his clipboard and made eye contact with Ralph. Not only that, he wasn't wearing his typical expression of bored bureaucratic torpor . . . instead, he looked genuinely _worried. _Ralph let his sneer drop.

"What's going on?"

"_Name _first, please," the surge protector urged. Ralph sighed.

"_Wreck-It Ralph. _We do this every day, buddy, you _know who I am."_

"I'm sorry, sir, it's not you. We're on full station alert level ES, we're stopping _everyone."_

Ralph glanced around the crowded station and realized he was right . . . surge protectors were glowing at the entrance to every game, and at every gate there were groups of detained characters being questioned and marked down.

"What's alert level ES?" Ralph asked, concernedly surveying the controlled chaos in the station. Then he noticed that the crowd seemed to be congregating in the direction of _Fix-It Felix Jr., _and his stomach dropped. He grabbed the surge protector by the shirt collar and lifted him up to eye level. The balding, blue, bespectacled program yelped and dropped his clipboard.

"What's going on? What are all these characters doing here?" he demanded, panic creeping into his voice.

"Calm down Ralph! Your game is _fine! _It's . . . it's Pac-man, Ralph."

A simultaneous relief and worry merged in Ralph's expression. "Pac-man?"

The surge protector nodded and jerked his head toward the Pac-man gate, which was right beside the entrance to Fix-It Felix. The crowd of characters were milling there too thickly for Ralph to see anything.

"Alert level ES . . . an _emergency shutdown."_

Ralph made a face at the surge protector. "An emergency _what?"_

"If you could . . . put me down please?"

"Oh! Sorry," Ralph set the SP back on his feet. He sniffed indignantly, straightening his glasses and picking up his clipboard.

"It happened out of nowhere," the SP began in a frazzled, melancholy tone. "The arcade had been closed for hours . . . it was the middle of the night, _no one _saw him coming . . . "

"Saw _who?"_

"_Litwak. _The arcade was dark, empty, and then all a sudden, he was _there! _The kids in DDR spotted him coming and they panicked . . . the all dumped out of their game, afraid that he would see them out of their programming. He made one round, and pretty soon half the arcade had abandoned their games. There was a mass panic that he was there to unplug someone . . . and then . . . then . . . "

"_Then?" _Ralph urged.

"Then . . . he stopped at Pac-man," the SP shook his head. "No one knew why Litwak would pull the plug on Pac-man . . . there were no glitches, no programming slips, no problems _anyone _knew about . . . it was like, one minute everything was normal, and the next, Litwak was _pulling the plug!"_

"What happened? Where's Pac-man? Where are the ghosts?"

The surge protector pointed, and through a break in the crowd Ralph caught a glimpse of the entire cast of Pac-man, huddled in a shell-shocked group in front of their gate. The entrance to their game was black, the portal shut down and completely sealed . . . but the plug above their entryway was still there. Ralph looked confusedly back at the SP.

"The Blue Ghost got wind of the plug-pulling seconds before it was happening, and he had Pac-man initiate an emergency shutdown of their game. When he saw that the game screen was black, Litwak didn't pull the plug . . . it's just a miracle that everyone was able to get out before the shut-off countdown finished," the surge protector shook his head. "Now they're stranded here until Litwak restarts the game . . . _if _he restarts it, that is."

Ralph felt his spirits sink as he looked at the huddled, flustered Pac-people.

"Thanks, buddy," he waved to the surge protector, then set off through the crowd.

Half of the characters in Litwak's Arcade, having never heard many details about Ralph's "Turbo" escapade in Sugar Rush a year back, admitted that he wasn't the bad guy they'd always thought he was, but were still a little wary of him, and would typically avoid making eye contact if they ever saw him in Game Central Station. The other half had heard a fractured version of the story wherein Ralph had nearly succeeded in destroying Sugar Rush on purpose; they scattered out of his way when they saw him coming. Ralph usually didn't let it get to him . . . he was used to it, after all, and all of his real friends knew the truth about what had happened . . . but tonight, as he lumbered hastily across the crowded station, he was actually grateful for his reputation. More than half the crowd parted in front of him like frightened sheep.

"Clyde!" Ralph shouted over the noise of the crowd. The orange Pac-Ghost responsively turned and looked around wide-eyed for a moment before spotting Ralph.

Ralph slowed to a halt beside the Pac-man gate, dropping on one knee to look down at his support group's therapy leader. Clyde was looking more shaken than Ralph had ever seen him . . . his hover lines were jumpy and erratic.

"Ralph," he acknowledged sullenly, his normally affirming and soothing voice sounding low and downtrodden. "So, I guess you've heard the news."

"Oh, Clyde, I'm . . . I don't even know what to say. I'm so sorry."

Clyde nodded sadly and sighed, looking down at the ground. "Well, we can all be thankful that we made it out in time."

"I'll say, thank goodness. Does . . . does anybody have _any _clue why Litwak was about to pull the plug?"

"I'm not sure, Ralph. It could have been anything, I suppose . . . rearranging the consoles, a routine maintenance . . . or, well . . . maybe he just thought it was time to replace us," the orange ghost suggested quietly.

Ralph shook his head and tried to sound reassuring. "What? Replace _you guys? _Come on, now, OG, you know that's not true. You're a _classic! _The gamers love you! No one could ever replace Pac-man."

Clyde smiled sadly, but continued shaking his head. "Thank you, but . . . it's just the natural cycle of life, Ralph. There comes a time when every game just . . . lives past it's prime. Pac-man has been in this arcade longer than any other game. We're getting old, Ralph. We can't expect to stay popular forever. It's just not realistic."

"But . . . but, you're _Pac-man."_

Clyde nodded. "I know, Ralph. I know."

Ralph sighed, looking around awkwardly at the other Pac-people. "So . . .do you have anyplace you can go? Until you're back on your feet?" he added hopefully.

"The other ghosts and I are going to Frogger. There's been talk of a Refugee Center opening there."

Ralph nodded comfortingly. "Frogger's a stand-up guy. I'm sure you'll be welcome there. And remember, if _you _ever need somewhere to stay, you can always come by Fix-It Felix."

"I appreciate that, sincerely. Then, of course, there's always a place for us in Mrs. Pac-man, as well."

"Oh, geez, _Mrs. _Pac-man! I almost forgot! How is she taking it?"

"As well as can be expected. You know, it's no secret she and Pac-man haven't been on the best terms since their . . . you know, _divorce," _Clyde whispered, glancing around discretely. ". . . but, given the circumstances, she's more than willing to take him in."

Ralph looked in the direction Ralph had nodded, and he spotted Mr. and Mrs. Pac-man huddled next to a bench, surrounded by other characters offering their support and consolations. His gaze lingered a moment involuntarily on the Pacs . . . even with their limited range of expression, he could sense the gravity and emotion of their programmed connection. Divorce or not . . . she would always be Mrs. Pac-man.

"I have to go, Ralph. The other ghosts need me . . . thank you for your kind words."

"No problem, Clyde. You let me know if you need anything."

"I will." Just as he was turning to go, the ghost made one final remark in Ralph's direction. "You know something? This makes Fix-It Felix Jr. the oldest, longest-running game in the entire arcade. That's really something to be proud of, Ralph. Take care, now."

As the Pac-people regrouped and the crowd of characters started to slowly disperse, Ralph found himself walking slowly toward Tapper's. He wasn't sure why. It was late, he was tired . . . he really ought to be going home and getting a few hours' rest before the arcade opened . . . but for some reason, he just didn't feel like heading back to his game just yet. He didn't know if it was the upset of what had happened, or how badly he felt for Clyde and the others, or if it was the vague, overhanging sense of worry, of not knowing why Litwak was going to unplug the game . . . whatever it was, he couldn't get the image of the devastated Mr. and Mrs. Pac-man out of his head.

For once, the surge protector didn't stop him as he was crossing the gate. He walked through the front door of Tapper's hoping to find it empty, but instead sighed and slumped his shoulders as he saw that it was nearly packed to capacity. Dozens of other characters had apparently felt the same sense of unease he had, and had come to Tapper's to try and calm down and talk the incident over.

Ralph carefully nudged his way through the crowd toward his usual seat in the back of the room and dropped down wearily at the counter, trying to tune out the loud clamor of excited voices all talking about the night's events. From what he heard, the incident was rapidly coming to be referred to as the _Pac-down. _

It was almost fifteen minutes before Tapper made it to Ralph in his continual rounds.

"Hey there, Wreck-It, my man," he said solemnly. "I take it you've heard, of course?"

Ralph nodded glumly. "Just talked to Clyde. Seems like they're holding up pretty well."

"It's a crying shame," Tapper shook his head jerkily, his low pixel-count face turned down in solemn regret. "A tragic loss for the arcade."

"I just don't understand it," Ralph muttered, resting his face in one hand and staring off into space. "I mean, _Pac-man? _How could Litwak want to unplug _Pac-man? _If that game goes down, what chance do the rest of us have?"

"I know what you mean, big guy. But hey, cheer up . . . maybe they won't go down, you know? And in the meantime, they've got the support of the whole arcade behind 'em. Now, what'll it be?"

"Aaahhh . . . you know, Tapper, I actually don't think I'm in the mood anymore," Ralph made a face. "Think I'll just head on home, free up the bar space. Looks like you might be busy for a while yet."

"Well, you just take it easy then. Get some sleep. And try to come down and see us once in a while, will ya? Haven't had you here for a nightcap in weeks."

"Sure thing. Sweet dreams, Tap-man." Ralph held out one gargantuan fist, and Tapper winked warmly as he pounded it with his free hand.

Just as Ralph was standing up to leave, however, he heard a familiar voice and stopped in his tracks.

"Ralph! _There _you are! Oh my stars above, we've been looking _every_where for you!"

Ralph gave Felix an awkward smile as the little repairman hopped onto a barstool next to him. Ralph groaned inwardly, knowing that he couldn't leave now.

"I was still in Sugar Rush when it happened. I only just found out," he answered wearily, sitting back down at the bar and folding his arms over it.

"It's just _awful, _isn't it?" Felix whimpered sadly, folding his arms like a corresponding miniature of his huge antagonist. "Poor _Pac-man!"_

Ralph glanced sympathetically at the sadness in his friend's voice. "Hey, don't worry about them. The whole arcade's there to help them out. Pac-man's going back to stay with the Mrs. for a while."

"Aww, that's just swell. Talk about a silver lining! You know, I was just devastated when those two split up. Who knows, maybe this time of crisis will rekindle the embers of their love?" Felix held his hands under his chin and smiled hopefully up at Ralph. Ralph made a face, trying to conceal his discomfort.

"Um . . . yeah, maybe," he muttered, trying to sound pleasant. Felix sighed again obliviously.

"Naturally, as soon as word of the emergency got out, my sugar-buttons ran off immediately to make sure her regiment was safely out of their game. She's such a caring leader," Felix rambled dreamily, staring off across the bar.

"Er, yeah . . . that's, that's Calhoun alright," Ralph stammered.

"Look at her over there, inspiring them to heroic stoicism, even now in this time of uncertainty."

Ralph followed Felix's love-addled gaze to the far corner of Tapper's where he noticed Calhoun and her team of soldiers from Hero's Duty gathered in a huddle. From the way she was shouting and punching her fist into her hand repeatedly, Ralph doubted very much that she was trying to inspire her soldiers to anything other than pants-wetting obedience.

"I tell you, Ralph . . ." Felix rolled on, clapping one hand on Ralph's arm but never breaking his lovesick gaze from Calhoun, who had just socked one of her men in the gut to make him stop crying. " . . . sometimes, I just can't imagine how I made it all those long years without my special lady by my side. . . without _love._ She just . . . ooh, she makes me feel like a fudge sundae melting on a hot sidewalk on Easy Street."

Ralph scrunched one side of his nose, but said nothing.

"I thought I knew what happy was, until I met her," he sighed, his eyes practically tearing up. Ralph inched away from him as if trying to disappear into the corner. Maybe he could just sneak out while Felix was distracted . . .

"Do you know what I mean, big guy?" Felix suddenly asked.

"Oh, uh . . . " Ralph coughed lightly. ". . . uh, yeah. Definitely. You know, love, marriage . . . uh, nuptials . . . all that hooplah. Good stuff."

Just as he was considering making a break for the door, Ralph jumped half a foot off his barstool as Calhoun appeared behind them and slammed her helmet down on the bar between them. Her blonde hair was slightly frazzled and she seemed to be breathing heavily.

"Whining, worthless, pansy-faced little _pony-boys!" _she snarled.

Ralph and Felix looked blankly at each other, then cautiously back at Calhoun.

"Who now, butter-dumplin?" Felix tried quietly.

"As soon as the ES alert went out, those so-called _soldiers _of mine panicked like a bunch of little girls at a _slumber party. _I found them huddled down at base practically wetting their pants. What if Hero's Duty had gone under the plug!? What would have happened to that sorry Lollipop Guild? I'll tell you what would have happened! They would have been sucked into the void of their own untimely demise like a Vienna boys' _tenor _choir with _snot _running down their noses, and no one there to so much as smack them with a _tissue!" _Calhoun growled exasperatedly and dropped down onto a barstool.

Ralph and Felix were quiet for a few seconds. Ralph shifted uncomfortably and got to his feet, rubbing his hands together slowly.

"Soooooo . . . . I, uh . . . I really better get back to our game, Felix, you know . . . make sure all the, uh, the bricks are still there and everything . . . "

"I understand," Felix whispered nervously behind Calhoun's back "I'll see you there in the morning, buddy."

"Right. It's, uh, nice to see you Calhoun. Just sorry it couldn't be under better circumstances. You're, um . . . you're looking very well!"

"Shut it, _Wreck-It, _before I shut it for you!" Calhoun snapped venomously over her shoulder. She paused for a moment, then blew her own bangs up with an exasperated raspberry. "Nice to see you too, Ralph," she amended in a low mutter.

Ralph and Felix exchanged a final understanding nod, then Ralph turned and hurried away like he'd just escaped from a bear trap. However, he had to slow down to pick his way through the thick crowd in Tapper's, and as he was waiting for Kirby to move somewhere where he could avoid stepping on him, he overheard Felix talking to Calhoun.

" . . . wasn't your fault, honey muffin! You had no idea this would happen, none of us did."

In spite of himself, Ralph peered back over his shoulder and was shocked to see Calhoun slumped forward on the bar, hiding her eyes with her hand. Felix had his arm around her shoulders, comforting her, and when she spoke, she actually sounded a little choked up.

"I wasn't there," she said quietly, so that Ralph could just scarcely hear her. "My men _needed _me, and I wasn't there for them."

"That's not true," Felix soothed her. "You _came through _for them, just like you always do. They can always count on you. _I _can always count on you."

Calhoun looked up at him, smiling weakly, but gratefully. And then Ralph heard her say something that he realized immediately he had never heard her say out loud before in all the time that he had known her.

"I love you, Fix-It."

They embraced. Ralph quickly turned away. As discretely as he could, he pushed Liu Kang and two DDR dancers out of his way and bolted out the door.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

That night, after Felix and Calhoun had returned and disappeared inside their house, and all the windows in the Nicelanders' building were dark, Ralph sat on the front stoop of his small brick home and looked up the black sky in Fix-It Felix Jr. There were stars here, but they were nothing like the ones Vanellope had programmed into her night sky. These stars were just clunky bright spots that stuck in the black backdrop like pins on a corkboard.

Ralph sighed and let his head hang down, his arms resting on his knees. He was exhausted from everything that had happened, and yet he hadn't been able to sleep.

He thought about Vanellope, alone in her cave in Diet Cola Mountain. She probably didn't even know what had happened yet. He kept hearing voices, Clyde and Felix and Calhoun, rolling over in his head like glitchy sound bites . . . .

_This makes yours the oldest game in the arcade._

_I thought I knew what happy was, until I met her._

_I love you, Fix-It._

_The oldest game in the arcade._

_Sometimes, I can't imagine how I made it all those long years without her by my side._

_I love you, Fix-It._

Sighing, Ralph looked back up at the sky, but all of a sudden, all he could see was Mr. and Mrs. Pac-man, comforting each other on the bench.

_I can't imagine how I made it all those long years . . .without __**love.**_

_Without love._

Ralph looked down at his hands, and for the first time in what felt like a long, long time . . . he had a familiar feeling. A feeling of loneliness . . . of wanting something that somewhere, deep down, a part of him was sure he would never have.

_This makes yours the oldest game in the arcade._

Thirty-one years . . . and he'd made it through fine, more or less, all by himself. He wasn't alone anymore. He had friends. He had a home. What did he have to complain about, what possible reason could he have to feel lonely now? With Felix, with Calhoun, the Nicelanders, the Bad-Anon guys . . . with _Vanellope . . ._

_. . . don't know how I made it without love . . ._

But now . . . he was. He was lonely.

Ralph sighed one more time, rising groggily to his feet from the stoop and rubbing his hands over his face, looking up at the sky once more before shuffling through his doorway.

Maybe it was all the anniversary hubbub going on lately . . . maybe it was a look Vanellope had given him without even knowing it, a look of affection so real and thoughtless that he couldn't help but wonder what else there was that he had been missing all these years . . . maybe it was the Pac-down, maybe it was what Clyde had said . . . maybe it was Mr. and Mrs. Pac-man, maybe it was Felix and Calhoun.

Or maybe, there was just something out there he still wanted.

Maybe . . . he just wanted to know what it was like to be in love.

A/N: _ . . . . . _ . . . . 0 _ 0.

What? Of course I knew his name was Clyde. I always knew. . . . . . _


	4. Chapter 3: Ready, Set, Romance

A/N: Welp, true to form, I don't seem to be able to keep a story short and simple. I didn't get nearly as far with the plot as I was planning to in this chapter, and it's looking like what I thought would be a ten or eleven chaptered breeze is mutating into something much, much longer. Whether that prospect appeals to you or not, I hope you enjoy this chapter as is!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 3: Ready, Set, Romance_

"INCOMING!" Vanellope shrieked, pointing her short arm straight forward from her perched position on Ralph's shoulder. "Severed foot at _twelve o'clock!"_

"Hmmm . . . wha?" Ralph muttered, barely glancing up in time to be hit in the face with a flying zombie foot. The limp blue appendage bounced off Ralph's nose and flopped onto the grimy linoleum, in front of where he was seated cross-legged on the floor. The zombie who had just dove down to dig at a spiked ball limped over to retrieve his foot.

"Suh-hhhooorryy boouud thaaad," he groaned apologetically, waving his detached limb. A speck of slime from his lower lip flew out and landed on Ralph's shirt, and he didn't so much as bat an eyelid at it. He only waved one hand half-heartedly in recognition, his eyes half-lidded and staring listlessly off into space as the zombie dragged himself back into the game.

Vanellope winced, leaning away from the slime spot and scrambling around to Ralph's other shoulder, gripping the good strap of his overalls for balance.

"Geez, did you get bit while I wasn't looking?" she waved her hand in front of Ralph's expressionless face. "Hello, zombie Ralph? Vanellope to zombie Ralph, do you read me? What's the _matter_?"

Ralph shook himself as if waking from a dream, looking away hastily and smearing a huge fist across his nose, sniffling.

"Sorry, just . . . my mind was somewhere else."

Vanellope blew a raspberry and elbowed him in the cheek. "Well, _that's _a relief. For a minute I thought it was something out of the ordinary."

She grinned at him for a few seconds, then felt her spirits sink as she realized he wasn't taking the bait. He only gave her a quick, sarcastic glance out of the corner of his eye and mumbled the obligatory, "Very funny." Then, without warning, he stood up - Vanellope still clinging to his shoulder - and carefully picked his way to the back of the crowd ( stepping on quite a few hands and feet, as per usual, but ignoring the yelps and squawks of protest ), then sat down on a mall bench and hunched over, resting his arms on his knees and sighing dejectedly. Vanellope narrowed her eyes and pursed her mouth into a concerned, flat line as she studied the side of his glum, downcast face.

It was Sunday, the one day a week that Litwak's Arcade was closed for a full twenty-four hours, and nearly every Sunday for the past year, Ralph and Vanellope had made it a weekly ritual to go out for the day exploring the other games. In the 30 years prior to their meeting, he had explained to her, Ralph had never really seen the point in regularly visiting any other games besides Tapper's and Pac-man for the occasional fruit run - he didn't have any real friends, and the majority of characters in the arcade were never exactly _happy_ to see him pop up in their games ( it certainly wasn't as if he was ever _invited _anywhere ) - so even after all those years, most of the arcade was still relatively unknown to him. And of course, Vanellope had been stuck inside Sugar Rush for more than half of the fifteen years she had been plugged in, and her memories from before Turbo's takeover were still fuzzy at best; the minute she had confirmed that her lingering glitchiness no longer prevented her from leaving Sugar Rush now that she was President of the game, it had been practically all Ralph could do to coax her back home every morning before the arcade opened. She had crashed ( and incidentally, she admitted to herself with a devilish grin, essentially _trashed_ ) his small brick house in Fix-It-Felix every night for weeks until she finally calmed down enough to be satisfied with semi-weekly visits, and of course their regular Sundays out. Over the past year, they had thoroughly explored nearly the virtual entirety of every game in the arcade, and narrowed the list down to a few of their favorite hang-outs.

This Sunday, they had spent their morning cruising through Mega Zone, Jolly Jogger, and Atomic Robo-Kid, then stopped off at Frogger to see how Clyde and the other ghosts were holding up since the Pac-down. The shock of the incident had worn off, but a definite atmosphere of worry and suspense still lingered throughout the arcade. Pac-man had been suspended in a dark, impermeable state of emergency shut-down for more than a week now, and _still,_ no one was able to figure out why Litwak had been about to pull their plug in the first place, or whether or not he would ever even get around to initiating a restart. The day after the Pac-down, the dreaded orange _Out-of-Order_ sign had appeared on the game screen, and as far as anyone could tell, for the time being, that seemed to be Litwak's final say on the matter.

After delivering the candy care-basket Vanellope had arranged to have made up for the Pac-ghosts, she and Ralph had gone to Mall of the Dead to wind down and watch the weekly zombie- volleyball game. The sprawling shopping mall full of aimlessly wandering cadavers, with its splattered walls, smashed store windows, and blinking fluorescent lights, had made Ralph a little uneasy their first couple visits, but Vanellope had taken such an immediate liking to it ( it was just so _refreshing_ after years of nothing but pink sunshine and candy rainbows ) that he had forced himself to tough it out, and now he admitted to her that it certainly did make for an entertaining afternoon. Every Sunday, the zombies held a volleyball tournament in the mall food court using equipment from the ransacked sporting-goods store. They organized co-ed teams with the game's good guys ( gun-and-melee-weapon-toting teenagers and mall cops ) and invited other game characters to watch. Ralph and Vanellope had a seat near the sidelines, Vanellope perched on his shoulder for a better view.

But this week, she had noticed a definite alteration in the mood of her ham-fisted friend. That foot was the _third_ flyaway body part to hit him without so much as making him flinch, and catching foul-ball zombie bits with his baseball-mitt hands was normally Ralph's favorite part of the game. In fact, he had been abnormally quiet and listless the entire day. From the minute he met her in Game Central Station, Vanellope could tell something was bothering him . . . he barely responded to anything she said, he ate the candy-apple she had brought for him in one bite without even noticing that she'd planted a candy-worm in it, and she continually caught him staring blankly off into the distance, lost in thought . . . as if he was looking for something, but wasn't sure exactly what.

He grew even more tongue-tied and distracted after their visit to the ghosts in Frogger . . . he had tried to be friendly and cheerful for the benefit of the Pac-villains, but Vanellope could tell his thoughts were wandering, and his low demeanor returned as soon as they left the game. She had become more and more frantic through the course of the day, trying _anything _to get a rise out of him, to make him taunt her back, or laugh, or even _smile . . . _but to her dismay, nothing worked. Now, as he settled down onto the mall bench and didn't even look up when the zombie team scored the final point and won the championship qualifying match, making the villain half of the crowd of spectators cheer raucously ( and fire a few lasers into the air ), Vanellope decided that enough was enough. Setting her pink lips firmly in determination, she climbed down Ralph's arm and stood in front of him on the floor, looking him straight in the eye.

"That's _it_," she declared loudly, punching him on the knee so he'd look up at her. He blinked in surprise, as if he hadn't even noticed that she had left her perch.

"What's it?" he muttered.

"_You. _I can't take anymore of this. You're coming with me, mister." Vanellope grabbed him by the hand and pulled with all the strength she could muster, leaning back as her feet slid forward and groaning with effort. She was barely able to pull his limp arm out straight.

"Coming with you where?" Ralph parroted disinterestedly, not budging from his seat on the bench.

"Never_mind _where, I said . . . urgh . . . _come . . . _with . . . _me!"_ she grunted loudly, nearly falling to the ground when he finally stood up. She gripped his finger to regain her balance, sniffing and straightening her chocolate-cup-wrapper skirt. "Come on, Chuckles," she growled, grabbing his hand and leading him away from the crowd. He followed in perplexed silence.

When they had walked far enough down the wide, open hallway of the zombie-apocalypse-ravaged mall that the roaring sounds of the volleyball game were just a faint din in the distance, Vanellope stopped near a smashed-up yogurt vendor and pointed firmly at one of the small tables set up in front of it. Raising an eyebrow at her, but still maintaining his look of malaise, Ralph obediently sat down on one of the spindly chairs. It creaked.

Vanellope hopped into the other chair across from his and folded her arms on the table, narrowing her eyes at him determinedly.

"WWAAAHH'll iid beeee, foooolks?" the zombie soda-jerk behind the yogurt counter drawled at them.

"Nothing for us. Take a break, Igor."

The zombie glared suspiciously at Vanellope, but turned and retreated again into the kitchen, banging once into the door frame and loosening an eyeball first.

For one silent moment, Ralph and Vanellope sat there and stared at each other.

"Ok, _what?" _Ralph finally asked, holding his hands out in a helpless shrug.

"Don't gimme that," Vanellope snapped, standing up on her chair and pointing an accusing finger at him. "You know darn well _what. _Come on, big man, _spill. _What's with the mopey-dopey act, already?"

Ralph made a face and folded his arms, looking away. He stuck out his jaw defiantly. "I don't know what you're talking about," he mumbled unconvincingly.

"Oh, come _on, _Ralph. You've been sulking like a stepped-on shroob all day, and it's starting to get old. So why don't you just _tell me what's wrong, already?"_

Ralph glanced at her for a moment out of the corner of his eye, then stubbornly turned away again, sinking his chin lower on his chest. Vanellope groaned exasperatedly, rubbing her face with her hands.

_She still forgot sometimes, how big of a baby he could be when he really wanted._

Fighting the urge to name-call and softening her features instead, Vanellope leaned over the small table between them, reaching out and putting her fingers gently on his arm. He jumped slightly at the contact, then looked her in the eye, his scowl slowly melting.

"Come on, Ralph," she softly, her big eyes serious and understanding. "I'm your best friend. You can tell me anything."

For the first time that day, his eyes opened fully, and he pressed her with a pained, hesitant look. He let his arms fall to the table and sighed loudly, running one hand through his hair.

"It's . . . it's complicated."

"If you say so," she smiled, trying vainly to brighten him up. She would never admit how much it affected her whenever Ralph was in one of his gloomy moods, rare though they were these days.

"And it's . . . well . . . it's sort of stupid, ok?"

"Big surprise _there."_

_There! _she grinned secretly with inward triumph . . . _that _finally got a small smile out of him. As quickly as it appeared, however, it was gone again. He exhaled, touching his face awkwardly and wincing down at the table, as if he wasn't sure how to begin.

"Ok, well . . . I guess . . . I mean, it sort of started when . . . er . . . you know how, now that Pac-man is out of commission, my game . . . Fix-It-Felix Jr., that is . . . well, it's the oldest game in the arcade, right?"

"Well, gah-_doi," _Vanellope snorted. "Everybody knows that, grandpa. So what's wrong with that?"

"I mean, _nothing, _of course, nothing's wrong with it. I just . . . it just got me thinking, ok?"

Vanellope stopped herself from blurting out _"That's dangerous" _just in time. She cleared her throat lightly instead, resting her chin in her hands and leaning supportively toward him.

"Thinking about _what?"_

"About how, after all these years, I'm . . . well . . . I'm not _alone _anymore, but . . . but then, in a way, I still . . . I just still sort of feel, like . . . like I . . . aww, geez, how do I say it . . . "

"But you're _right, _Ralph. You're not alone," she said warmly, confusedly, unknowingly sliding one hand closer to him on the tabletop.

"I know, I _know, _it's not that, it's . . . it's just . . . I just got to thinking about Felix and Calhoun, and how even after all those years in Fix-It Felix Jr., he still . . . er, that is, he found something that he . . . and _she, _and . . . and Mr. and Mrs. Pac-man, how they still took care of each other, even after . . . er, I mean . . . aaaaahh . . . " Ralph groaned, trailing off in mid-sentence and looking away, squirming with obvious embarrassment.

Vanellope tilted her head to one side, genuinely perplexed.

"You're not really comin' across, there, Ralphie."

Ralph exhaled again, dragging one hand down his face and squinting at her, struggling visibly to get the words out.

"I . . . I'm not, _lonely . . . _at least, not the way I used to be. I just . . . I just wish . . . "

Vanellope leaned closer, urging him on with her eyes. Finally, like pressure bursting from a valve, Ralph blurted it out in one breath.

"I just wish I knew what it would be like to have _someone special."_

A few seconds of blank silence passed between them. Ralph looked as if he wanted to drop through a hole in the floor. Vanellope narrowed her eyes, still confused, and a faint sense of hurt beginning to well up inside her.

"But . . . you _have _someone special," she said quietly, her voice wavering ever so slightly.

Ralph's eyes opened wider and he immediately turned to face her completely, holding out his hands as if wanted to take it back. "Oh, no, _no, _Vanellope, I didn't mean . . . of _course _you're special to me, kid. You're the most special friend I've ever had . . . ever _will _have." He gently laid his hand on the top of her head, rustling all of her hair and hiding her forehead from view. Vanellope quirked a half embarrassed, half relieved smile at him and peered out from under his palm.

"Then what do you mean, _special?" _she pressed further.

Ralph withdrew his hand and exhaled a final time. "I mean _special _the way . . . the way Mrs. Pac-man is special. The way Calhoun is special."

He paused, wincing slightly, and all at once, it finally dawned on her.

Vanellope stared at him blankly for a second. Her already rosy cheeks turned almost imperceptibly rosier.

"Oh," she whispered. She stared back at Ralph's embarrassed, shrinking look.

Then she burst out laughing.

Ralph blinked, deflating as she hunched over the table and laughed, pounding it once with her fist before rolling back dizzily and giggling in his face.

"Is . . . _hee-hee . . . _is that _all?" _she demanded, scarcely able to contain her relief.

"Well . . . yeah," he mumbled confusedly. Vanellope snorted again.

"Oh, sweet _sourball, _you had me _worried, _Ralph! Is that really all that's been bothering you this whole time? Why didn't you just _tell me?"_

"Listen, it's not the _easiest thing _for me to talk about, _ok?" _Ralph snapped defensively, the red in his face just beginning to fade. "Es_pecially _not with a nine-year-old ankle-biter like _you."_

"Well, you're in luck, Casanova, because it just so happens that this ankle-biter is going to help _you _get your ticket punched for Smooch City," Vanellope grinned deviously, standing up on her chair and cracking her knuckles.

Ralph went instantly red in the face all over again, standing up so hard he knocked his chair back and holding his hands out in a _stop _motion.

"_Whooooaa, _whoa, whoa, that is _not _what I meant," he stammered. "No _way _am I going to take ro . . . rom . . . m-muh . . . . rom-m-muh . . . _that kind _of advice from a kid."

"Well, take a look around, Goo-goo Eyes," Vanellope quipped snarkily. "You see anyone else raising their hands to help you? I wouldn't be so quick to turn away your only lifesaver if I was in _your _sinking shoes . . . er, feet," she amended, glancing grimly at Ralph's bare feet, which had picked up some unsavory stains from walking around the gruesome Mall of the Dead.

"Who says I even _wanted help _in the first place?" Ralph demanded. "It's not like I'm asking to be . . . _set up, _or anything."

Vanellope shook her head, clucking her tongue sagely. "Look at you. You can't even _say the word _with blushing. Ralphie-boy, it's _me _we're talking about here. Have I ever steered you wrong before? . . . . _don't answer that," _she cut him off as he was about to open his mouth. "The point is, there's no fudging way I'm going to deal with some sad-faced, lonely-hearts wrecking machine for the rest of my life, and if that means that it's up to me to find you some sweet thing to . . . hold _hands _with, then by Gum, I'll search this _entire arcade _until I find the lady who can _hand-_le it," Vanellope ended with a huge grin, holding her arms out expectantly. "Get it? _Handle _it?"

Ralph did not look amused. In fact, his brow was cemented in a permanent scowl and he looked as if his cheeks may never be their normal color again.

"Yeah. I _get it."_

Vanellope sighed, straightening up and walking across the table to touch his arm again.

"Listen, Ralph," she said, speaking quietly and looking him straight in the eye. "All kidding aside. I just want you to be _happy, _understand?"

His scowl lifted slightly, and he nodded reluctantly.

"And I also want you to know that you can be _honest _with me. And if _honestly, _this is something that's important to you . . . then I want to help you," she smiled up at him, punching him on the arm. "I mean . . . what else are best friends for?"

Finally, for the first time in what seemed like ages . . . he smiled again, a _real _smile. Vanellope beamed and held out her hand.

"_I'll _help you find what you're looking for, and _you_ '86 the sad-sack routine. Deal?"

"Deal," he agreed, carefully shaking her tiny hand. Vanellope grinned at him a second longer, then excitedly clapped and rubbed her hands together, jumping down onto the floor.

"Alright then! We better get going, it's gotta be nearly dark already. We've got a _lot _of work to do before the arcade opens."

Ralph's smile vanished and he raised his shoulders uneasily. "What, uh . . . what exactly did you have in _mind, _kid?" he asked nervously.

"Well, _duh, _Ralph. If you're seriously going out on the _lady prowl, _you've _got _to something about . . . well, all of _this," _she gestured up and down from his head to his dirty feet.

Ralph raised one eyebrow defensively. "Whaddaya mean? What's wrong with _this?" _he mimicked her arm motion.

"Ralph. Ralph, _baby," _she said as gently as possible, holding her hands out. "You're great. You're the _man_. Me, big guy? I love ya, you know I do. It's just, that . . . well, you have to take a moment to consider things from the perspective of a _lady . . . _of a potential lady _friend, _let's say_. _To someone who doesn't _know _you, and doesn't _know _what a swell guy you are on the _inside, _well . . . first impressions say a _lot, _Ralphie. And right now, the first impression that you would make on a lady is . . . mmm . . . how do I put this gently. . . . . . .'_I'm a dirty, knuckle-dragging ape who's never owned a toothbrush and I smell bad.'"_

Ralph lowered his brow at her. Vanellope held up her hands innocently.

"Not coming from _me, _Ralph. Heck, you know me, I don't even _notice _your stench anymore. I'm just trying to break it to you gently _now, _as a _friend, _so you don't have to hear it later from _them . . . _and as a friend, I'm telling you. You've gotta do something about the stink, buddy. And the posture. And the clothes. And the hair, the dirty feet, the devastating breath and the general brute mannerisms."

Ralph crossed his arms and continued staring at her, stone-faced and un-amused. Vanellope scaled up onto his shoulder and pinched his cheek affectionately.

"Trust me pal, all we've got to do is keep the girls from running away screaming long enough to talk to you for just a few minutes. Then, when they see how sweet you are on the _inside, _they won't _care _about the outside, and you can go right back to being the smelly dumpster ogre we all know and love!"

Ralph looked at her with a dead-pan glare for a few seconds, then sighed heavily in resignation and held the bridge of his nose with his thumb and first finger.

"You're absolutely _sure _you know what you're doing, kid?"

"Trust me, lover boy," Vanellope grinned. "By the time I get through with you, they're gonna have to change your name from Wreck-It Ralph to _Romance Ralph. _Now, onward to Sugar Rush! We've got us some rough edges to polish."

A/N: Yeah, gonna have to work on speeding up the pacing in the future. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this chapter, and please leave a review!


	5. Chapter 4: Shave and a Haircut

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 4: Shave and a Haircut, Two "Bits" _

_BIIING - BOOOONG._

From somewhere deep inside its white, sugary walls, a gong sounded as Vanellope pulled the licorice doorbell rip-cord beside the enormous front doors of the Candy Castle. She folded her arms in satisfaction and leaned back.

Seconds later, both sides of the heavy doors were pushed open from within by symmetrical teams of candy-corn butlers. Vanellope strolled casually past them, snapping her fingers over her shoulder for Ralph to follow. He sighed, begrudgingly dragging his feet over the threshold. The same thought that had been increasingly repeating itself in his head ever since they'd reached Sugar Rush blazed once more through his mind . . .

_**How **__did I let her talk me into this?_

"Madam President."

"Madam President."

"Madam President."

"Yeah, yeah," Vanellope waved off the canned, congenial greetings of her servants. "Your fearless leader returns once more. Go on back to your ping-pong game."

The candy-corns cheered raucously and abandoned the doors, letting them slowly grind shut on their own as they rampaged in a pointy-topped little hoard down a nearby staircase that led to the basement.

"Had a ping-pong table put in the employee lounge. Keeps 'em outta my hair on the weekends. Follow me, Ralph my man."

Ralph rubbed the back of his neck uncertainly, following Vanellope through the main royal court and into a hallway lined with suits of candy-armor.

"Ahhh . . . listen, kid . . . I think I'm starting to have second thoughts about - "

"Shush!" Vanellope cut him off, grabbing his hand and pulling him around the corner at the end of the hall. "We made a deal! _No backsies."_

Ralph sighed. "Right. No backsies."

"Right. And don't you forget it. I _said_ I'd help get you a lady, Ralph, and darnit, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. Quick, in here." A pair of automatic graham-cracker doors in the wall slid open with a soft _bing, _and Vanellope pulled him into a red velvet-lined elevator. He had to duck and hunch his shoulders together to just barely fit inside. Vanellope wriggled carefully around him, pressed a button on the control, and the doors slid shut.

"Let's hope she doesn't break down on us!"

". . . _break down?" _Ralph echoed incredulously, trying to scrunch himself into a smaller ball as the elevator gave a struggling jolt.

"Never had this much weight in here before! Keep your fingers crossed . . . or, er, in your case, maybe _don't . . . _just one . . . more . . . floor! There!"

The elevator _bing_-ed again, and the doors opened onto a long, dark hallway. Vanellope bolted out excitedly, followed much more slowly by Ralph, who straightened up a fraction too soon and winced as he put a small crack in the elevator doorframe.

"Never mind that, just follow me!" Vanellope chirped. The light in the hallway was so dim, Ralph could hardly see her. He followed the high echo of her voice and the hollow patter of her rapid footsteps resonating in the empty tunnel, squinting and holding his hands out cautiously in front of him as he stumbled forward, wary of stepping on her if she darted underfoot.

"Where are we?" he muttered. He was sure he had never been in this part of the castle before.

"Wait for iiiit," Vanellope coaxed, her voice suddenly smaller and farther away. There was an abrupt _CLANG, _and then the sound of creaking gears. A strip of blinding light suddenly appeared near the floor at the end of the hallway, growing wider as a door rattled upwards. Ralph shielded his eyes with his hand and stepped toward the expanding light, blinking.

"Waaaiit for iiit . . . aaaand . . . _ta da!" _Vanellope exclaimed, jumping through the doorway and holding out her arms, gesturing to the enormous room.

Ralph stepped through the doorway into the light, and instantly his brow hardened into a straight line.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Vanellope shrugged innocently, not even trying to hide her huge grin. "Well, what did you expect, Tiny? You're a little big to try and squeeze into _my _bath tub."

Ralph groaned and dragged one hand down his face. _How? __**How **__had he let her talk him into this?_

They were standing in an underground candy-kart _carwash. _The whole business was laid out in front of them on a long conveyor belt, complete with hosing, soaping, scrubbing, rinsing and buffing stations. Peppermint-stick robotic arms with enormous, white-gloved hands holding mop-ends and sponges hovered over the washing assembly line . . . arches with countless spraying nozzles made of what looked like peanut brittle drew water from enormous glass tanks supported by jaw-breaker foundations. The damp air in the warehouse-sized room was suffocating with the combined smell of soap and sugar.

Ralph turned from the carwash to Vanellope, pinning her with a hard stare.

"And what, _exactly, _am I supposed to do with _this?" _he gestured toward the hulking candy machine-line.

Vanellope only smiled, lowering her eyelids slyly as she stepped backward onto a round, railed in little hard-candy control panel and pressed a button on the console, the platform rising up into the air beside the carwash conveyor belt. Ralph followed her up with his eyes, an increasing sense of unease building inside of him.

"_You, _my pungent friend, don't have to do anything. Just sit back and enjoy the ride."

Ralph narrowed his eyes. "Enjoy the . . . wait a second, Vanellope, what do you mean-"

"Oh, attendants!" Vanellope called happily, her voice echoing in the wide room. She pressed another button on her cherry-picker console, and a ringing alarm went off somewhere.

Before Ralph could blink, dozens of candy servants, each wearing white little carwash uniforms, appeared out of nowhere, popping up like ants from behind the carwash machinery and swarming toward him in a colorful mob that barely rose above his knees. Ralph's eyes shot wide open and he began backing away from the approaching mob.

"Whoa, _whoa, _hang on a minute here, guys . . . you don't have to . . . _no . . . NO . . . _Van_ELLOPE!" _he shouted desperately, reaching up and groping toward her on the platform just as the herd of adorable attendants swarmed over him, knocking him over like a miniature candy tidal wave. He yelped and stammered, swatting at them futilely with his hands, but it was no use. In seconds, they had lifted him up off the ground and were carrying him toward the start of the carwash conveyor belt like a swarm of ants carrying a leaf, all the while making tiny squeaking noises to each other.

"Just relax, Ralphie!" Vanellope called from her perch on the raised platform. "Let the men work!"

"I'm . . . _urgh . . ._ gonna get you for this, twerp!" Ralph pointed one finger threateningly up at her as he was slowly lifted up, hostage-style, onto the first station of the carwash.

"Yeah, yeah, you can thank me later," Vanellope waved him off. She cleared her throat, lifted up a candy-striped bullhorn, and pointed it toward the start of the line. "OK, troops!" her small voice boomed at the attendants, "Phase one, INITIATE!"

"Phase one? _What's phase one? _What's . . . AGH!" Ralph yelped as the sentient candy wave suddenly pushed him stumbling to his feet on the station platform, then jumped up and began crawling all over him. "What are they -?" he stammered, twitching and trying to reach the scurrying little sugar-gremlins as they scaled up and down his arms, his back . . .

Then, practically before he could speak, they had unhooked his overall strap and pulled _both _ragged T-shirt layers off and over his head, darting away with them.

"_What the -?! . . . _ooohhh, no you don't! _No!"_

Ralph danced and swatted and stomped at the swarming candy people, but they were too fast for him. Two of them tripped him, sending him sprawling flat on his stomach on the platform with a loud _oof, _and then in the blink of an eye, they had pulled off his overalls and disappeared, leaving him lying there alone in nothing but a pair of blue boxer shorts that he'd practically forgotten were in his code.

His face beet red, Ralph jumped to his feet and tried to cover himself with his hands, his temper flaring to match his embarrassment as he grit his teeth and looked around for his clothes . . . but the candy attendants seemed to have vanished as if they'd never been, along with his overalls.

Vanellope was still grinning from her platform, holding one hand over her eyes as she shouted the next order through the bullhorn.

"Hosing station, _ACTIVATE!"_

"Wuh. . . whoa-_oa!" _Ralph wobbled dangerously as the machinery gave a loud churn, and the platform he was standing on lurched forward as the conveyor belt began to turn. He looked up in time to see a battalion of spray-nozzles trained squarely upon him.

"Oh, _no," _he groaned.

_SSSSSHHHHHHPPPPPSSHHH!_

The nozzles each turned on at once, more than a dozen jets of cold water spraying over every inch of him. He held up his hands to try and deflect the streams, but as the belt slowly carried him under the arch the showerheads turned to follow him, hitting him from behind and drenching him head to toe before finally shutting off.

"Bbbblllwwwbbbllww!" he shook the excess water from his head like a dog, shivering.

"Commence _SOAPING!"_

Two robotic arms with white-gloved hands, each gripping a huge cake of green soap, cranked toward him from both sides. Ralph squirmed and sputtered as the hands aggressively pummeled and scrubbed him all over with the soap until he was practically nothing but a towering heap of suds.

"Begin _DEEP SCRUBBING!"_

Like magic, the squadron of candy attendants reappeared, each now armed with a sponge. They swarmed over Ralph like they were scaling a hill and scrubbed every inch of him . . . his face, his back, his hands, his underarms, the bottoms of his _feet . . . _his eyes squinting shut from the soap, he groped around blindly, roaring half-heartedly between bouts of irrepressible laughter every time the tiny hands and sponges worked at a ticklish spot. They scrubbed him until there was nothing left to scrub.

"_RINSING!" _Vanellope's magnified voice blared from off to his right. His wiped the soap from his eyes with the back of his hand and narrowed his brow in her direction. On the floor behind her, to his impotent annoyance, he saw the team of candy attendants power-scrubbing his pair of overalls in a huge wash-basin, while another group wearing protective gloves and goggles was incinerating his orange and green T-shirts with a blowtorch.

_Just wait 'til he got his hands on that little . . ._

_SSSSSHHHHHHPPPPPSSHHH!_

For a second time he was bombarded from all sides with thundering water jets. When they finally stopped, he stood there with his arms held out from his sides, his hair plastered down over his eyes, dripping like faucet.

"You might want to hold onto the wheel grips for this next part, Ralphie!" Vanellope called cheerfully to him. Ralph pushed the hair out of his eyes, looking quizzically around.

"Why, what's the next pa . . . . ?" he began, then trailed off, his jaw dropping as he looked up and saw the enormous hot air jets the belt was carrying him toward.

Frantic, he looked down and saw four grooves set into the platform, places to lock down the wheels of a kart. He scrambled to his knees and latched each fist into a wheel grip just in time for his fleet to be blown out from under him by the roar of the driers. He squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his fists for dear life as the hot, gale-force winds blew him back horizontally for thirty seconds . . . . then abruptly shut off, dropping him down flat on the platform with a painful _THUNK. _

When his head finally stopped spinning, Ralph rose groggily to his feet, groping for balance with his arms as the room swam in front of his eyes. The conveyor belt slowed to a lurching halt at the end of the carwash, and he stumbled forward off of it, as punch-drunk as if he'd been going one on one with Zangief for twenty minutes.

As he dropped dizzily to his knees on the floor, Vanellope popped up in front of him, the platform having lowered her down at the end of the carwash. Grinning from ear to ear, Vanellope tilted her head innocently at him.

"Well? How do ya feel?"

Holding his head with one hand, his hair flying wildly in all directions from the blowers and his eyes still rolling, Ralph shook his head and found his focus long enough to glare dizzily at the three Vanellope's swimming in front of him.

"Kid," he growled sourly, shakily rising to his feet, "Remind me one of these days to _eat you_."

"Aaaaahhh, what are you _cryin' _about, you look _great! _Heck, you _smell _great. Your stink is so diminished, I think my head is actually clearing for the first time in months. Come on, you can't stop now! On to detailing!"

_"Detailing?"_

"This way!" Vanellope hopped up a small staircase onto another raised platform where he saw more teams of castle servants waiting patiently around what looked like a raised metal operating table. His eyes widened and he tried to stumble back.

"Oh _no . . . no way, kid . . . "_

"Aw, relax, would ya? It's just the mechanical table we lift the _karts _on for waxing_, _come on."

Hesitantly, still feeling somewhat disoriented, Ralph inched his way toward the table, grabbing it to steady himself until his head finished straightening out. Vanellope jumped onto a tall stool next to the table and patted it with one hand.

"Have a seat, monsieur."

Ralph eyed her suspiciously for a moment longer, then reluctantly lifted himself onto the table. Satisfied, Vanellope raised her hands and clapped them over her shoulder.

"Butler! Valet!" she ordered grandly, and candy servants hopped forward responsively. "See to the gentleman! You, _hair_ . . . you, hands and feet . . . you, _teeth . . . _and for crying out loud, _somebody,_ bring him his _pants back!"_

The candy people immediately bustled to their tasks, moving around each other in tandem like clockwork. Four lollipop butlers, each wielding a pumice stone and nail file, set to work grating away at his leathery hands and feet. He eyed them weirdly, but tried to hold still, swallowing his giggles and only snorting quietly when they tickled the bottom of his feet. Two more attendants appeared with a ladder and scaled up behind him, attacking his wild hair with brushes. One little jawbreaker-headed guy in a white dentists' coat, donning a pair of goggles and a breathing mask, climbed up onto his shoulder, hooked one hand in the corner of his mouth, pulled back his lip and began unapologetically scrubbing at his teeth with a foot-long toothbrush. Ralph gripped the edge of the table with his hands and forced himself to hold still. Finally, when the squad of butlers had finished, a team of candy valets appeared with his freshly washed overalls and a new white undershirt. His overalls had even been mended . . . the normally ragged cuffs had been hemmed and the characteristic missing left strap had been repaired.

Ralph rubbed his jaw with one hand, licking his teeth and scrunching up his face at the strange taste and feel of _clean_. He clicked his tongue a few times and shook himself all over, shuddering at the smorgasbord of awkward sensation he'd just endured.

"You didn't have to _burn _my shirt, you know," he grumbled, turning embarrassedly away until he finally lifted the straps over his shoulder again. "I've only got so many of those."

"Ralph, honey. How many times in the last thirty years did you take that shirt off and _smell it? _Trust me. It was for the best."

He rolled his eyes, holding his arms out and turning to face Vanellope. "Well?" he demanded shortly. "Am I _presentable _yet, your _Majesty?"_

"Almost, Ralphie, almost. We've got the sundae . . . now we just need the _cherry." _She snapped her fingers again, and this time the candy valets came forward carrying something dark green and thickly folded over itself. They presented it to Ralph, who took it in his hands and held it up dubiously, letting it unfurl. He cocked one eyebrow at it, then gave Vanellope a weird look.

"I don't know about this, kid."

Vanellope sighed impatiently, waving him on with her hands. "Would you at least _try it on?"_

"It just . . . I don't know, it doesn't feel like _me."_

"What, so homeless, hillbilly lumberjack is the only side there is to you? Just give it a _chance, _Ralph. Who knows? You might like it."

Ralph sighed, lifting up the knitted green sweater and sliding his hands into the sleeves . . . which, surprisingly, stretched to fit him perfectly.

"Where did you even get this?" he muttered, his voice muffled by the thick yarn collar as he slid the sweater over his head.

Vanellope shrugged, drawing shy circles with her toe. "Let's just say I had it stashed away somewhere for a special occasion."

Ralph smiled disbelievingly, lowering one eyebrow at her. She turned slightly pink and rolled her eyes, but chuckled good-naturedly in defeat. "O_kay, _so I had the tailors make it for you a while back. I was gonna give it to you on _Christmas, _but . . . well, desperate times."

Pulling the bottom of the sweater smooth over his clothes, Ralph took a deep breath, exhaled, and turned around. He held his arms out again.

"Well?"

Vanellope was quiet for a moment. She climbed down off the stool and backed up as if for a better view, inspecting him head to toe and holding her chin thoughtfully.

"Hmmmm," she murmured to herself. "It needs . . . _something . . . " _she leaned forward, peering intensely at his face. . . then snapped her fingers, her eyes popping brightly. "That's it! Hold still!"

Vanellope dashed at him and climbed up his newly-sleeved arm to perch on his shoulder. Holding her thumb out towards his forehead like an artist visualizing a painting, she sloppily licked the palm of her hand and then smeared it over his hairline.

"Ugh, _Vanellope!" _Ralph muttered in protest, but only flinched and waited for her to finish. She carefully curled a piece of his bangs around her finger, sliding it off to the side in a wave, then quickly drew her hands back and gasped.

"_There! _That's it! _Perfect!" _she exclaimed wildly, leaning back and beaming at him full in the face, practically glowing. "I'm a _genius!"_

Ralph lowered his eyelids skeptically as she climbed down onto the floor. "Really. A new sweater and some _spit _in my hair makes _you _a _genius?"_

Vanellope shrugged, her grin never fading. "Then don't just take my word for it, Good-lookin'! See for your_self!" _Never breaking her satisfied gaze from him, she backed up to the wall and pulled a cord suspended from the ceiling. A wide curtain the same color as the walls that he hadn't noticed was there suddenly lifted, revealing a long, three-paneled show mirror. As the curtain rose, a wave of glare flashed from the overhead lights, and as soon as it subsided, Ralph stood there, blinking at his own reflection. His mouth opened. Vanellope giggled triumphantly.

"Am I right, or _am I right? _Ha ha, what did I tell ya, big man? Say hello to _Romance Ralph."_

Ralph squinted in disbelief, taking a few steps closer to the mirrors.

"That . . . that's _me?" _he said quietly.

Vanellope beamed at his surprise. Ralph just stood there, dumbfounded.

"But I . . . I look _good," _he half laughed to himself, still hardly able to believe it.

Vanellope moved to stand next to him and grinned at their side by side reflections. "Aaaaah, come on, Ralph. You always looked _good_ . . . you know, for you. Now, you just look _dateable."_

At that, Ralph's faintly growing smile fell again, and he felt a hard knot forming in the back of his throat as his mouth went dry. He fidgeted lightly, tugging at the cuffs of the sweater.

"Er, yeah . . . about the actual . . . d . . _dating _part . . . what, ah, what exactly did you have in mind, kid? I mean . . . this may come as a shock to you, but I don't exactly _know _a lot of . . . of . . ."

"Women, is the word you're looking for, Ralph. Say it with me. _Wo. Men."_

Ralph narrowed his eyes. "You _know _what I mean."

"Yes, I _do. _But listen, you're never going to get anywhere with anyone romantically if you're _afraid _of them, Ralph. Now, look that handsome half-giant in the face and repeat after me."

"Vanellope, I just meant that -"

"I said _DO IT!"_

"Ok!" he held up his hands defensively, regarding his reflection again.

"Right. Now. Repeat after me. '_I, Wreck-It Ralph, am one terrific bad guy.'"_

Cringing with self consciousness, Ralph stared his awkward-faced reflection in the eye and muttered the words half-heartedly.

"I, Wreck-It Ralph, am one terrific . . . "

"Like you MEAN IT!" Vanellope cut him off, barking like a drill sergeant.

"Alright, _geez! _I, Wreck-It Ralph, am one terrific bad guy!" he blurted out quickly, shrugging down at her.

"_I, the same Wreck-It Ralph, can have any lady I want, if I put my mind to it."_

"I, the same Wreck-It Ralph, can have any . . . . Vanellope . . . "

"Say it!"

Ralph sighed. ". . . any lady I want, if I put my mind to it. Vanellope, I don't even know if there is a . . . a _lady . . . _in this arcade for me. I don't want just _anybody, _I want . . . you know, someone _special. _What if she just doesn't exist?"

"Well, Adonis, that's what we're on a mission to find out, isn't it? How will you ever know if you don't get out there and _look?"_

Ralph looked dubiously at his reflection once more, then nodded reluctantly in agreement. "Ok, kid," he sighed. ". . . what's your plan?"

"I am _so _glad you asked," Vanellope grinned, steepling her fingers in front of her face and chuckling softly.

Ralph swallowed, and his mouth was dry again.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It was almost twenty minutes later as they emerged from the Sugar Rush rainbow gate into Game Central Station, but to Ralph it seemed as if they'd blipped there instantaneously. He tugged at the neck of his sweater awkwardly as they passed through the gate screen and into the brightly lit station still humming with Sunday activity. The huge, digital clock on the far wall of the transit that counted down the time remaining until the arcade opened again at nine a.m. Monday morning read _14:36:10, _and kept on ticking.

"Ok . . ." Vanellope plotted strategically as they walked through the station, gesturing with her hands as if moving pieces on a war board. "It's only about seven thirty, which means we have almost five hours left until the party ends . . . . if we pick up the rest of our contingent and don't waste time once we're inside, that should be plenty long enough to -"

"Whoa, whoa . . . what are you _talking _about? What party? What _contingent . . . ?"_

"Never mind, Ralph, you just leave the strategizing to the professionals. Ok, wait here, I'll be back before you can say malted milk balls."

"Wait!" Ralph called as Vanellope took off toward a game gate. She paused and looked back at him impatiently. "You . . . you just want me to sit here? Where are you going?"

"Where else?" Vanellope shouted, pointing up at the scrolling name above the gate. "I'm going for _backup."_

Ralph looked up and was startled to see that it was none other than the entry to Fix-It Felix Jr. He opened his mouth to speak again, but when he looked back down, Vanellope was gone.

Exhaling loudly, Ralph let his hands drop limply to his sides and plopped down on a nearby courtesy bench. A few characters already sitting there jumped in surprise, then gave him nervous looks and slid further away from him. Ralph ignored them, hunching over and shooting a deadpan glare off into space.

_This is hopeless, _some part of him muttered quietly inside. _You can't just make your soul mate magically appear by putting on a sweater._

_Besides . . . what if the problem wasn't his clothes, or his reputation, or even his breath?_

_What if the truth was what he had secretly feared all along, from the beginning . . . what if . . . there just plain __**wasn't**__ anyone out there for him?_

The more he thought about it, the lower his spirits sank. He suddenly realized with crushing dismay that he couldn't even picture . . . not even in his own head . . . what kind of person would ever want to be with someone like him.

_Who, out of anyone he could possibly think of, could ever have feelings about him . . . that way?_

_Who . . . ?_

"Ruh . . . R-_Ralph? _Wreck-It Ralph, is . . . is that _YOU?"_

Ralph froze on the bench, his whole body going rigid when he heard the lilting, bubbly, unmistakable voice of his protagonist. He could barely force himself to look up, his every muscle suddenly paralyzed with embarrassment.

_Vanellope. I am going to __**kill you **__for this. _

Felix and Calhoun ( dressed in army-gray sweatpants and a white tank top with dog tags instead of her battle armor ) were standing in front of him next to Vanellope, both of their jaws hanging open and their shoulders slack. For a few agonizing seconds, the four of them just looked at each other in silence.

Then, Calhoun snorted so loudly that she made a passing Goomba jump three feet in the air. She covered her mouth with one hand and doubled over forwards, choking on fits of laughter but never breaking her gaze with Ralph's sweater. Vanellope shot her a scathing glare, and Ralph squeamishly hid his face with one hand ( other characters in the station were beginning to stare ), but Felix appeared not to notice his wife's convulsions. His eyes were fixed widely on Ralph and a disbelieving smile was spreading on his face.

"Why, Ralph, I . . . I hardly recognized you! You look fan_tas_tic, brother!"

Calhoun straightened up, still gasping for breath from her raucous cackling. "Whuh . . . whuh-huh . . . w-where are you headed? Ladies' luncheon at the _Audubon Society? _You . . . hoo-hoo . . . you look like Hemingway's _grandma_ had a _baby with a -"_

"A, _hem," _Vanellope punched Calhoun in the leg, giving her a double-barreled stink eye and tilting her head meaningfully in Ralph's direction. Calhoun's smile vanished, and she exchanged faintly embarrassed glances with Felix before straightening up and clearing her throat.

"I, ah . . . that is . . . I like the sweater, uh . . . Ralph."

"Alright. That's it," Ralph threw his hands in the air and stood up from the bench, clenching his fists and setting off at a stomp toward Fix-It Felix Jr. "I knew it. This was a _stupid _idea in the first place, I never should have . . ."

"_No, _Ralph, wait! You _can't _quit now!" Vanellope ordered, grabbing the leg of his pants and digging her heels into the floor. "We . . . made . . . a . . . _deal!"_

Ralph stopped and looked back at her, his glower drooping into irritation. He growled and tossed his head in resignation. Vanellope straightened up, her eyes darting between the three of them and her breath quickening.

"Ok. Just hear me out, everybody."

"Yeah . . . why _did _you drag us out here, pipsqueak?" Calhoun demanded suddenly, crossing her arms. "You said it was some kind of emergency."

"It _is . . . _well, sort of. Listen, we don't have time for the whole rundown, so I'll just have to give you the bullets . . . Ralph's been feeling lonely lately, he's on the prowl for romance, and _I've _got a plan to find him some. The three of you are friends, right? Well, my plan calls for somebody to run interference for him, and I can't do it by myself. Fix-It, Sarge . . . we _need your help."_

She blurted it out rapidly, practically all in a single breath, and then there was another moment of dead silence. Ralph stared at Vanellope, jaw agape. If it weren't the responsively stunned looks on Felix and Calhoun's faces, he would have thought for sure that he'd hallucinated that speech, like some kind of waking nightmare.

The Fix-Its seemed to snap out of the brunt shock of the proposition at the same moment. Calhoun coughed into her fist and looked away awkwardly. Felix looked as if somebody had just offered him a puppy.

"Well, zip my mouth and call me _speechless . . . _Ralph, you old rascal, you, why didn't you just _say so?"_

"Oh, ah . . . heh, you know, Felix," Ralph muttered painfully through clenched teeth. "Just wasn't something I wanted to _broadcast," _he hissed fiercely, shooting Vanellope with a death glare.

"Well, I think that's just the bees' knees! You just say the word, Miss Von Schweetz, and Fix-It's your man! We'd be more than happy to help our friend in his search for companionship. Right, ginger snap?" Felix beamed up at Calhoun, who winced visibly and gave a slight shrug toward Ralph.

"Uh . . . yeah. Sure. What he said."

Ralph stifled a defeated groan into his palm.

_How. __**How **__had he gotten himself into this._

"Alright then, kids, time's a wastin'. Follow me!" Vanellope ordered, grabbing Ralph by the hand and charging off toward the other end of Game Central Station, Calhoun and Felix following behind.

"Ok, you've got your con_tin_gents," Ralph muttered. "_Now _will you _finally _tell me where we're going?"

"Don't have to, buddy-boy. We're _here."_

Ralph looked up and noticed that they had mingled into a growing crowd of other characters, all apparently waiting to get through the portal into the same game. He recognized about half the cast of Mortal Kombat and a handful of the regular Tapper's crowd, but most of the others were strange to him. Just standing there for a few seconds, he began to get the feeling that this wasn't exactly his typical Bad-Anon crowd.

As if each of them were thinking the same thing, he, Felix and Calhoun all looked up simultaneously to read the name of the game over the crowded doorway. Ralph's face fell.

"Aw, come _on, _snicker-doodle," Calhoun muttered. "_This _is your big plan? You really think you're going to find a ying for Wreck-It's yang in a game like _Dance Dance Revolution?"_

As soon as Calhoun said its name out loud, Ralph noticed faint music emanating from the game portal . . . the familiar, beat-heavy, DDR techno pop that put his heartbeat in his stomach and set his teeth on edge.

"Hmmm," Felix hummed thoughtfully, looking around at the crowd waiting to get into the game. "My honeybuns has a point. Do you really think that these kinds of gals are . . . well . . . Ralph's _type?"_

"No, no, you guys are missing the _big picture _here!" Vanellope insisted excitedly. "This isn't just some nightly disco drool we're talking about, this is the _Sunday night DDR block party!_ Half the ar_cade_ is invited to this thing . . . the place'll be packed with so many eligible chickadees, Ralph'll be beatin' 'em off with a stick! . . . . or, you know, with his hands. Whatever works._"_

Felix and Calhoun reflexively looked up at Ralph at the same time. He winced, leaning over to peer again into the dark entryway to the dancing game. He nervously rubbed the back of his neck.

"I don't know, Vanellope . . . "

"Come oooon, Ralphie, _please? _Just give it a _try? _For _me?"_

Ralph glanced pleadingly at the Fix-Its, but they only shrugged at him.

"Well, I . . . sup_pose_ it couldn't hurt to go in for a _few _minutes," Felix tried optimistically.

Ralph looked back at Vanellope, then back at the DDR gateway, then back at Vanellope again. Her hands were clasped together, her big hazel eyes batting at him over a sugar-sweet smile. He let out a long, weary exhale, and gave up.

" . . . ok, guys," he sighed heavily, rubbing his eyes with one hand and holding the other out to Vanellope for her to gleefully latch onto, ". . . I can't believe I'm saying this, but . . . let's get in line for Dance Dance Revolution."

A/N / P.S. Disclaimer: I don't own ANYTHING. NOTHING. Especially not anything to do with DDR.


	6. Chapter 5: Dance, Dance

A/N: Chapter five, up and ready! The good news is that this chapter is _substantially _longer than any of the others so far . . . the bad news, is that this is partly because it may be the last update I can make for a little while. Don't lose heart, I'll try to continue on as soon as possible! But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this extra-long chapter. As always, please leave a review ( seriously, they encourage me to work faster! )

Oh, and in case anyone gets confused, this - - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - -represents either a time break, or, as in this chapter, a change in character POV.

Disclaimer: I own absolutely none of the copyrighted characters mentioned in this segment.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 5: Dance, Dance . . . . ._

"I cannot believe I'm giving up my Sunday evening for this," Calhoun muttered as the line to get into the DDR block party crept slowly forward towards the gate. "Do you people know how many _quarters we had _in Hero's Duty yesterday? I've got shin splints that would cripple a _draft horse _, and now, instead of relaxing at home, I'm waiting an hour in line for some _teeny-bopper _dance party?"

"Aw, come on, Tammy, it might be fun," Felix tried to assuage her. "It's been ages since we went out dancing. And besides -" he hopped up with a light _sproing _sound, peeking over the heads of the few characters in front of them; "- it won't be long now, we're nearly at the gate!"

Calhoun crossed her arms grumpily and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. "Hmph. Well, if you ask me, this is a waste of time anyway. None of the stuck up, pixel-polishing girls at a party like this are going to give ol' garbage-can hands here so much as the time of day. . . . . . no offense," she added over her shoulder, shrugging good-naturedly at Ralph.

"None taken," he muttered blankly.

"Geez, listen to you party poopers! How about a little _optimism, _for Pete's sake?" Vanellope snapped, leaning forward on Ralph's shoulder.

"_I'm _optimistic!" Felix piped up helpfully.

"Yeah, but . . . Felix . . . you're _always _optimistic, even when it makes no sense. No offense," Ralph grumbled.

"None taken!" Felix smiled obliviously.

"All of you, _shut up _and get your game faces on! We're next!" Vanellope pointed excitedly at the gate. Mega-man fazed through the entrance ahead of them, and finally it was their turn. The four of them stepped forward to the gate, which was cordoned off with a red velvet rope.

"Ooh. Classy," Calhoun muttered sarcastically.

As she was speaking, a surge protector popped up beside the gate, armed not only with his usual clipboard, but also a pair of dark sunglasses and what looked like a nightstick.

Ralph groaned. "Oi. _This _guy."

The SP made a slightly hurt face and adjusted his dark glasses at them. "Now, now, you can relax. I'm not on _official _duty tonight . . . just got a side gig workin' security for the DDR. Names and games, please?"

Calhoun sighed and stepped up. "Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun, Hero's Duty."

"Fix-It Felix Jr. from Fix-It Felix Jr., sir!"

Ralph only glared at the familiar SP and crossed his arms. "Don't you _dare _act like you don't know who I am."

The surge protector gave him a disapproving look, then shook his head and flipped disinterestedly through the list on the clipboard.

"Sorry, folks. I don't see any Calhoun, Fix-It . . . or _Wreck-It . . ." _he raised his eyebrows at Ralph as he muttered, " . . . anywhere on the list, so I'm afraid you'll have to step aside for the _invited _characters. Next!"

"Hmph," Vanellope cracked her knuckles, narrowing her eyes at the SP. "Let me handle this, kids." She slid down from Ralph's shoulder, straightened the neck of her hoodie and walked straight up to the surge protector, crossing her arms officiously. She cleared her throat.

The surge protector looked over his clipboard, then confusedly from side to side. Vanellope cleared her throat again, loudly this time.

"Down here, Pennyworth?"

The SP looked down, then flattened his mouth impatiently at her. "Can I help you, little girl?"

"You can, as a matter of fact. Why don't you check that list again and tell me if you happen to find anyone by the name of Vanellope von Schweetz, _President of Sugar Rush?"_

The surge protector raised one eyebrow, but obediently fanned once more through the list. When he reached the last page, he jumped, lifting up his glasses and widening his eyes at the page.

"_Oh, _dear . . . er, I'm, _so _sorry about that Mrs. . . . er, _Miss _Von Schweetz, I didn't recognize . . . er, that is, I didn't realize these folks were with _you_. Yes, of course, you're on the VIP list. Go right ahead! Sorry again for the trouble, Madam President."

The SP apologetically pulled back the velvet rope, bowing back and gesturing the four of them inside. Vanellope shook her head and trounced through, motioning for the others to follow her.

"Yeah, keep your pocket protector on, I'm _sure _they'll still _pay you," _she rolled her eyes at the SP's awkward bow. "Come on, contingent."

Calhoun stuck out her bottom lip and raised her eyebrows respectively. "Have to admit," she nudged Ralph with her elbow as they passed through the gate into the long, dark hallway leading into the game, ". . . kid knows how to throw her weight around."

Ralph smirked. "Yeah, all twenty pounds of it." He reached forward and snatched up Vanellope by the hood of her sweatshirt, setting her back on his shoulder. He raised one eyebrow at her. "_VIP list?" _

Vanellope shrugged, but didn't try to hide her proud smile. "What can I say? They've been trying to get me to this thing for months. I guess once word gets out that you're the _president of a game, _everybody suddenly wants you at their parties."

Ralph shook his head, but couldn't help quirking one corner of his mouth into a smile. "Ok . . . . but if you're such an A-lister, President _Preschool_, why haven't you ever gone to this shindig before?"

Vanellope raised her hands uncertainly, looking off somewhere at the ceiling. "Dunno. Guess I've just always had better things to do on _Sunday_." She tilted her eyes at Ralph and smiled meaningfully.

Ralph paused in the hallway, Calhoun and Felix passing them. He stood there silently a moment, looking in astonishment at the grubby, grinning little girl on his shoulder. He felt it again . . . . like he was melting slowly on the inside. He smiled softly back at her and nudged the side of her head playfully with his finger.

"Thanks, kid," he said quietly.

Vanellope waved him off. "Come on, Ralph. You think I'd really miss one of our Sundays out to go to some yuppie _dance party?"_

"No, I mean . . . really, Vanellope. Thanks. For everything. For . . . trying to help me out, with . . . you know, all _this,_" he tilted his head down at his sweatered-chest, then down toward the faintly glowing light at the end of the hall.

Vanellope set her mouth in a determined smile. "Hey, a promise is a promise."

"You two comin', or what?" Calhoun snapped from down the hall. "'Cause if you've changed your minds and I don't have to _be here anymore, _I'd like to know _now."_

Ralph gave a final nod at Vanellope, then hurried to catch up with the Fix-Its. As they neared the end of the tunnel, the pop music that had been hanging lowly in the atmosphere began to grow louder and louder, the bass pounding deeper and deeper until they could practically feel it vibrating the floor beneath them. At last, they came upon a circular door of blurred glass set into the end of the tunnel. Beyond it, brightly colored lights were flashing at random from out of the darkness, green and yellow and fluorescent pink.

"Well, it's now or never, gang. You ready, Ralph?" Felix asked supportively.

Ralph closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled.

"I'm ready."

"Let's get this doofus rodeo over with, then," Calhoun muttered. She pressed a button on the wall, and the glass doors slid open with an automated _whoosh._

The instant the doors were open, the volume of the music nearly doubled. All four of them winced as they stepped forward into the game, their ears painfully adjusting. Ralph squinted as one of the blaring beams of colored light passed over his eyes, struggling to take in the scene in front of him.

They were standing inside of a single, enormous room with high warehouse ceilings, tiled marble floor, and walls too distant to make out in the semi-darkness. The only illumination in the entire place came from the colored party lights that seemed to flash continually from nowhere, sparkling off of the half dozen disco balls suspended from the ceiling and casting waves of bright spots over everything and everyone. The pounding rhythm of the blaring techno music all but drowned out the collective voices of what looked like more than a hundred different game characters, all spread out and mingling in the gigantic club room. At one end of the party there was a neon-lit bar and tables with swanky lounge seating; at the other end, in front of a humongous, open dance floor with glowing tiles, was the Dance Dance Revolution player stage, complete with dancers' platforms and the scrolling game screen that filled one entire wall of the room. Guests were crowded in front of the stage, cheering on the DDR avatars as they competed on the dual platforms, white arrows speeding up the screen in two huge columns in front of them.

For a few seconds that felt like a lifetime, Ralph simply stared at the spectacle of the enormous party, his mouth slightly agape.

_This? . . . . . . might be harder than he thought._

_"Jiminy," _Felix muttered, hunching his shoulders uncomfortably and twisting one little finger in his ear. "I don't think I've ever been in a game quite this _loud _before. Is this really the kind of music the young people listen to nowadays?"

Calhoun sneered and put her hands on her hips. "And I thought _my _game was a wasteland full of mindless drones," she muttered. "Well, Schweetz, you're the captain on this '_mission_.' Where do we start?"

Ralph peered at Vanellope nervously out of the corner of his eye. What little courage he had left balled up and then dropped like a rock into his stomach when he saw that she was surveying the crowd with a markedly less-than-confident look, chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully.

"I guess I didn't expect it to be quite so . . . . so . . . ."

" . . . . _dance-y?" _Calhoun filled in for her, rolling her eyes.

Vanellope frowned, then set her gaze determinedly and jumped down from Ralph's shoulder.

"Ok, team," she shouted. Even with her yelling, Ralph had to strain to hear her small voice amidst the swimming drone of the music and the crowd. "First thing, we've got to stake out our home base. Follow me."

Vanellope took off through the crowd, and Felix started jumpily and hurried after her, holding his cap to his head and carefully avoiding the seething mob of other characters.

"Pardon me! Excuse me! Coming through, sir! Pardon me, ma'am!" he muttered in a continual stream that went unheard by anyone.

"Come on, Wreck-It," Calhoun muttered, setting off after Felix. Ralph followed her cautiously, suddenly feeling very acutely, painfully aware of his size as he attempted to weave through the tightly knit crowd. He hadn't gone five steps before stumbling and bumping into someone, almost knocking them to the floor.

"Sorry!" he winced, hugging his arms tightly to his body and backing into several more people. He stumbled into a cluster of tiny balloon-shaped people on the floor and they scattered fearfully, squeaking indiscernible obscenities. The characters near him muttered in protest, shooting him unappreciative glares and squeezing to get out of his way.

"OW! Watch what you're doing, klutz!" someone snarled at him as he accidentally swung his arm around and clocked them in the back of the head.

"_Ooh_ . . . ah, s-sorry! Sorry about that!" he called, anxiously trying to back his way out of the crowd. Suddenly, a fist grabbed the back of his sweater and yanked him away from the swarm. He whirled around and saw Calhoun, rolling her eyes at him. Vanellope and Felix were waiting at a table nearby, vigorously waving them over.

Once the four of them were seated in the wraparound booth - Ralph squeezed in uncomfortably on the end, arms hugging his sides and sucking his gut in - Vanellope stood up on the seat and leaned over the table, drawing them all into a huddle.

"Alright, fun runners. Here's the plan of attack. Since we're both too short to work the room and we know Ralph the best, me and Fix-It will hold up here and scan the bar for potential marks . . . you know, ladies who look like they might be able to hold their own against Knuckles here. Sergeant Sweatpants, you're the closest thing we've got to a regular woman, so you're gonna have to make the rounds and set 'em up."

Calhoun raised an eyebrow. "Set up _what_?"

"The _marks, _of course! You know, the pins, the chicks, the birds, the _ladies. _We spot 'em, you set 'em up, and then _Ralph _moves in and knocks 'em down!"

Both Felix and Calhoun reflexively turned to look dubiously at Ralph, who was hunched over with a look of total bewilderment.

"That's it?" he blinked dumbly at Vanellope. "That's your _plan of attack_?"

Vanellope sighed exasperatedly. "Listen. Maybe it's not what you'd call an _elegant _strategy, but the only way we're going to get into the groove of this thing is if we just buck up and _do it. _Now are we going to sit here all night like scared little girls, or are we going to get out there and _find Ralph's ying?" _she pounded her little fist once on the table, looking excitedly back and forth between her three accomplices. There was half a minute of blank silence.

Calhoun sighed, rubbed her eyes, and smacked a hand lightly on the table as she stood up.

"I need a drink," she muttered. "I'll be over at the bar. Let me know when you spot a _pin _for me to set up, Captain Cookie-britches."

"That a'girl! Watch for my signal!" Vanellope shouted at her back. Calhoun waved one hand carelessly over her shoulder in response. Vanellope hunkered back down in the booth, grinning excitedly. "Ok, the wingman is in position. Now, Ralph, you need to get over there and find a place to roost. Go act casual at the other end of the bar and wait for Calhoun to pitch one your way."

Ralph took a deep breath and let it out slowly, wincing as he squeezed himself out of the booth. He stood up and let his shoulders hang, loosening up as if he were about to go sprinting.

"That's it, Ralph!" Vanellope cheered him fiercely from behind. "Shake it out, big guy, shake it out. Who's the man?"

"I'm the man," Ralph answered lowly, narrowing his eyes at the bar and struggling to psyche himself toward it.

"I can't _hear you!" _Vanellope shouted. "I asked you, WHO'S THE MAN?"

"_I'M_ THE MAN!" Ralph yelled back, clenching his hands into fists and flexing his arms above his head.

All the characters seated at nearby tables jumped and turned to stare at him. Ralph twitched, clearing his throat awkwardly and quickly straightening up.

"I'm the _man_," he whispered once more to himself, then set off toward the bar. He chanted Vanellope's mantra silently to himself as he drew closer, his heart pounding harder with each step.

_I, Wreck-It Ralph, am one terrific bad guy. I, the same Wreck-It Ralph, can have any lady I want, if I just put my mind to it . . . if I __**just **__put my mind to it . . ._

_**I'm **__the man . . ._

He looked up, and swallowed thickly when he saw that he was already there. The DDR bar lay in front of him, polished and intimidating, seeming to stretch away from him for miles. He started to lean forward onto the countertop, trying to look casual, then noticed with dismay that the bar was made of _glass,_ with glowing neon panels underneath, and thought better of it, opting instead to stand up straight with his arms folded and one hip leaning carefully on the outer edge. He eyed the bar stools and had to stifle a groan when he saw that their bases were _also _made of glass. He came quickly to the resolution that this night would probably go a lot more smoothly if he just refrained from touching _anything. _

The music blared, the lights flashed, the party continued. The bar was full of characters talking and laughing with each other, and three slick-looking bar tenders in white button-down shirts strolled back and forth, making jokes and sliding drinks. One of them, a young-looking guy with perfectly coifed blonde hair, finally noticed Ralph and started meandering towards him. Ralph struggled to school his features into a cool, aloof stare and tried not to make eye contact with the barkeep, but it didn't matter. He stopped at the end of the bar and leaned forward, flashing a polite, perfect-toothed smile.

"Evenin', big guy. What's your poison?"

Ralph froze for a minute, tapping his fingers nervously on his arm. "Aaaah . . . evening," he parroted, trying to sound as casual as possible. "I . . . ah . . . . I think I'll just take a root beer."

The bartender paused for a second, then raised one eyebrow and tried to hide a surprised smirk. "_Root beer_? You, ah . . . you sure I can't tempt you with something a little higher shelf? Open bar, you know. Everything on the house."

Ralph clenched his jaw and tried to smile coolly. "No, thanks, I'll just stick with the root beer."

The bartender raised his eyebrows, but shrugged and bent over to search for a glass. He pulled up a glass stein, blew some dust off of it, then searched for a half a minute before he found the right tab.

"Can't remember the last time somebody here ordered a plain root beer," he chuckled. "Enjoy!" He slid the full mug down the bar toward Ralph, who had a micro-panic attack as he reached out to grab it, mercifully managing to spill only a few drops. He carefully picked up the frosty mug with two fingers and sipped awkwardly from it. Tapper always kept a stock of barrel-sized glass mugs for his larger patrons, but the glasses at this bar had clearly been programmed strictly for DDR-avatar-sized hands. Ralph carefully set the drink down and slid it a few inches further away from him with his fingertip.

Suddenly, a faint snatch of nearby conversation caught his attention.

" . . . . that Pac-man would even _think _of trying something like that?"

Ralph looked up curiously for the source of the talking, his ears perked. He realized it was coming from two ninjas who were sitting just a few bar stools away from him. He leaned inconspicuously in their direction, trying to pick up what they were saying.

"All I can tell you is what I've heard around the water cooler," the first ninja said, gesturing with one black-gloved hand. "Word on the street is, if Litwak doesn't restart the game by tomorrow night, Pac-man is going to try to _hack back in and do it himself."_

Ralph's eyes shot wide in surprise, and he had to stop himself from speaking up and butting into the conversation. The second ninja gave a long, low whistle and leaned back on his bar stool.

"_Man. _Now that takes some real guts. I don't get it, though . . . they've only been shut down for a _week. _They've still got hope. Pac-man's really willing to take that big of a risk, just on the off chance? Nobody's _ever _tried to hack back into a game locked in _emergency shutdown. _How does he even know it would work?"

"He _doesn't," _the first ninja shook his head sympathetically. "That's just the rumor that's going around. Hey . . . Phil! You made it!"

A third ninja suddenly came up beside them, and the other two turned to greet him, their conversation drowning out under the music again. Ralph turned his back to the end of the bar again, forgetting himself and leaning back against it as he looked thoughtfully off into space.

_Hack into a __**locked out **__game? Was that even possible? He had no idea the Pac-man characters were getting so desperate._

The weekly Bad-Anon meeting had been scheduled for Monday night in Mrs. Pac-man. Ralph made up his mind to go and have a talk with Clyde afterwards, to make sure he was doing alright and find out if there was any truth to the rumor.

Preoccupied momentarily by his sympathy for the Pac-people, Ralph had almost forgotten where he was when there was a sudden tap on his left shoulder. He jumped slightly, waking from his reverie and turning to see who it was. The second he did, an instantaneous pit the size of a Pac-cherry formed in his stomach, and his mouth went cotton dry as the memory of why he was at the party in the first place all came rushing back at him.

"_Here _he is!" Calhoun exclaimed through semi-clenched teeth in a falsely sweet voice that was nothing like her own. She was smiling painfully wide, obviously struggling to keep from slipping into her regularly gruff demeanor. It was almost frightening. Standing next to her was a tall, attractive, muscular woman with blonde hair swept back in a pony-tail, wearing a dubious expression and a purple, skin-tight boxing outfit that accentuated her outrageously curved figure. Ralph's jaw dropped unconsciously, half in bewilderment and half in abrupt terror. The reality of the whole crummy romantic experiment suddenly hit him like a punch in the face, and he found himself paralyzed at the absurdity of the whole thing. How had any of them _ever _thought this was a good idea?

Ralph shot a quick, incredulous glance at the table where Felix and Vanellope were still seated. They both just flashed him simultaneous thumbs up.

Calhoun gave a strained, nervous laugh and punched Ralph lightly on the arm, snapping him only partially out of his stupor.

"I was _wondering _where you'd been hiding yourself all night, you . . . _you_. I was just telling Nina here all about you," she smiled at him toothily, then turned to introduce the woman. "Nina, this is _Wreck-It Ralph_. Ralph, this is _Nina Williams . . . _you know,from Tekken? Well, haha . . . actually, her console _is_ way over by the air-hockey tables, so I guess it's no wonder you two haven't met before! Ah-ha-ha!"

Ralph . . . half of him still grappling with the urge not to stare weirdly at Calhoun's incredibly bizarre girly-girl act . . . stood there dumbly for at least ten seconds before he could find his voice again. When he finally did, to his abysmal horror, it came out in a choked, cracking squeak.

"Evening," was all he could think of to say. He forced his face into a petrified grin, offering his hand for a shake.

Nina looked at his gigantic palm like it was a rotting pumpkin. She crinkled one side of her nose distastefully and leaned towards Calhoun.

"_This _is the nice, no-nonsense single guy?"

"Yyyyyeeeah!" Calhoun answered with forced enthusiasm, moving to stand next to Ralph and clapping a hand on his shoulder. "I mean, come on, Nina. Look at that face! Is that the face of a big sweetheart, or isn't it?" She grabbed Ralph's jaw with her hand and dragged his face down to their eye level.

Nina narrowed her eyes at Calhoun, then looked back at Ralph. He tried to smile, and instead only managed to bare half of his teeth in a sort of deranged grimace. Nina stood there in dead silence for another agonizing moment.

"I . . . I'm sorry. I don't think so," she muttered blankly, casting one more distasteful glance at Ralph's still outstretched arm. "I'm, er . . . I'm just gonna go back to my group now. It was . . . _nice meeting you, _Rolph."

Ralph stood there with his arm hanging in midair, staring speechlessly as Nina made her hasty getaway and disappeared back into the crowd. He let his arm fall limply to his side.

"_Rolph?" _he repeated incredulously, then turned his eyes to glare at Calhoun. "Big _sweetheart?"_

Calhoun groaned exasperatedly and let go of his face, shoving him aside.

"Look, I did my _best, _ok?" she growled. "In case you didn't notice, I'm a little _new _at this. Besides, maybe she would have _stuck around _if you'd stopped gaping like a brain-dead ape long enough to say something besides '_Evening!'" _she mimicked in a tiny, squeaking voice.

Ralph moaned, forgetting again about the glass bar and dropping his elbows onto it to cover his face with his hands. The blonde bartender and everyone sitting near him winced as a faint _crriick _sounded from the glass as it bowed beneath him.

"This is pathetic," Ralph mumbled, running his hand over his face and grabbing his mug of root beer, not bothering to baby the glass and downing the rest of it in one gulp. "Let's just cut our losses and _leave now, _before something _worse _happens."

Without warning, Calhoun grabbed the neck of his sweater and dragged him over to look her square in the eye.

"Listen, Wreck-It. I've already wasted half my Sunday night bumming around this _puberty fest _trying to trick some poor broad into your corner, and I'll be _hogtied _if you're going to give up now and go home crying like a spanked school-kid. So _suck it up, _sit up straight, and _get ready for round two!"_

She shoved him back onto the bar with a blunt growl of finality and stormed away. Ralph sat there stunned, dropping slowly onto the bar stool. It _crriiicked, _and the bartender shuddered visibly, keeping one eye peeled in Ralph's direction with increasing anxiety . . . but Ralph didn't notice. Calhoun's last words hung in the air like a bad omen, echoing in his mind and practically souring his stomach.

_Get ready for round two._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Three hours later, as the crowd around bar was slowly beginning to thin out and the blond barkeep had taken up a permanent station next to Ralph to make sure he didn't drop down again onto his already precariously cracking glass barstool . . . he had practically forgotten all about the disaster with Nina. If Calhoun brought her up to him now a second time and reintroduced her, Ralph probably wouldn't have remembered her from the first time.

No . . . he was too busy being tormented by the collective memories of rounds two through forty-six to think about round one.

The events of the last three hours seemed to keep playing themselves over and over in his head, like some kind of horrifying blooper highlight reel stuck on repeat. Ralph wasn't sure which gem of the evening had been the worst . . . he had so many to choose from, and in retrospect, each one seemed somehow more awful than its predecessor.

There was girl number two, a friend of Nina's from Tekken who had only followed Calhoun over to see if Nina had been exaggerating.

There was girl number three, some kind of petite, crown-wearing damsel from the Medieval Madness side-scroll game. She had taken one look at him and burst out laughing so hard that she snorted half her Fuzzy Navel through her nose and sprayed it all over one of the three ninjas still sitting at their end of the bar.

There was Vikarella, _also _from Medieval Madness - all the female characters from that game were celebrating a bachelorette party at the opposite end of the bar, and at Vanellope's hand-signal instruction, Calhoun had circled around picking them off one by one and steering them toward Ralph. Vikarella, a veritable two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle in a fur-lined girdle, had insisted on arm-wrestling Ralph the instant she laid eyes on him, then cried and punched him in the jaw when he won ( the bartender had actually cried a little too, as Ralph was summoning all the restraint he could muster not to break Vikarella's arm and smash the glass bar all in one go ).

There was number fifteen, one of the female mall-cops from Mall of the Dead. Their conversation had lasted almost twelve minutes, by far the longest of the evening. She had smiled hugely with all of her teeth through the whole thing, responding to every awkward syllable Ralph uttered with a forced, perky "How interesting!" When she'd asked him what he did in his game and he answered, her smile twitched visibly. "How INTEResting! Would you excuse me? I have to powder my nose." She disappeared, and twenty minutes later Ralph noticed her out on the dance floor, surrounded by other Mall of Dead characters. She was pointing in his direction, and they were all laughing hysterically about something.

There was number nine, the flag-girl from the Down Home Truck Racing game. Two minutes in, she had started choking on the olive from her drink, and when Ralph tried to clap her gently on the back he had smacked her face-first into the bar and given her a nosebleed.

Numbers ten through fourteen had taken one look at him, shaken their heads politely, turned around and walked straight back the way they'd came.

Number twenty had narrowed her eyes at him disbelievingly and asked out loud, "Isn't that the big ape who almost obliterated _Sugar Rush _last year?"

Number twenty-four had waited until Calhoun left, then without a single word, turned and bolted like a rabbit running away from a pack of dogs.

Number twenty-nine had looked him straight in the eye, shaken her head apologetically, and said,

"I'm sorry. I don't date _bad guys."_

Forty-six rounds.

Forty-six crashes, forty-six burns.

It was getting late. The party was gradually beginning to wind down; almost two thirds of the room had cleared out, the remaining stragglers and all of the DDR avatars dancing only half-heartedly at the platforms, laughing and not really trying to hit all of the arrows. The blond bartender, his sleeves rolled up after the long night, gave Ralph a nod and gestured to the small pyramid of empty glass mugs stacked in front of him.

"Another root beer, slugger?" he asked sympathetically.

Ralph, who was slumped forward with his face smushed flat into the glass, shook his head dejectedly. The bartender patted him the back, sighed quietly with pity, and moved away.

Calhoun, her shoulders slumped with exhaustion and her boots dragging on the floor, exhaled loudly as she dropped onto the barstool next to him.

"Well, that's it, ham hands," she muttered. "We're down to our last pigeon. Come on, pick it up. One more, and the night's over."

Ralph peeled his face off the bar and dropped both hands heavily down on it, rattling the stacked glasses. He pinned Calhoun with a bitter stare and shook his head darkly.

"No. _No. _Calhoun, I _can't take anymore."_

Instead of flaring up at him like he expected, Calhoun sighed heavily and gave him what was actually a comforting look, reaching out and patting one hand on his sweatered arm.

"Listen, I know it's been . . . well, a _rough night . . . ._"

"_Rough night? _I'd have been better off trying to schmooze a bunch of _cybugs!"_

" . . . _but," _Calhoun continued, standing up and looking him square in the eye. " . . . the Wreck-It I know isn't a _quitter. _So come on, soldier. Tighten your belt, lace your boots up, and give it one more shot. Alright?"

Ralph held her gaze defiantly for a few seconds, then sighed, dropping his head in defeat.

"Sure. Why not. What's one more_?" _he agreed wearily.

"Atta' boy," Calhoun punched his arm affectionately, then set off into the dwindling crowd for a final time. Ralph shook his shoulders out, sitting up and bracing himself for yet another crushing rejection. For the first time in hours, he remembered Vanellope and Felix over in the booth. He glanced towards them, then lowered his brow when he saw that they had both fallen asleep at the table, slumped against each other's shoulders and snoring. Ralph rolled his eyes and set his face into a hard, blank stare, just as Calhoun approached him with the night's final victim.

At this point, Ralph was all but numb to the encounters. He looked up at girl number forty-seven with a completely deadpan stare, not even trying to look engaging anymore. He recognized her vaguely as one of the older DDR avatars, a young woman with bobbed pink hair, a nose piercing, black lipstick, and striped leggings under a raggedy punk outfit. Looking her over and noticing her already discouraging expression, Ralph fought the powerful urge to bury his face in his palm.

"Ralph, buddy, this is _Cynthia," _Calhoun, to her credit, smiled, putting forth as much effort to be bubbly as she still possibly could. "She was sitting alone over in the lounge, and I just thought to myself . . . there's a girl who looks like she could use some company! Cynthia, this is my good friend, _Wreck-It Ralph."_

Cynthia, who was looking a little bit like someone who had just realized they had been kidnapped, gave Ralph an awkward little wave and a forced smile.

"Um . . . hi, there . . .er . . . Wreck-It Ralph."

"_Evening," _Ralph answered mechanically, not even bothering to make eye contact.

For a moment, the three of them just sat there in silence. Finally, Calhoun clapped her hands together and whistled lowly.

"Well, alright then! I'll just, ah . . . I'll just go grab us a couple of drinks, and . . . let you crazy kids get to _know _each other, eh? _Eh? _Yeaaah."

Calhoun slowly inched away, then turned and made her abrupt exit, leaving Cynthia and Ralph staring awkwardly at each other. There was another half minute of painful silence. Finally, Ralph felt the very last part of him that really cared about _anything _at the moment snap. He gave a long sigh and patted the seat next to him. Cynthia jumped slightly, looked around, then cautiously eased down onto the barstool.

"Sooooo . . . " she started uneasily, sitting on her hands and looking at Ralph as if he were a bomb that might go off at any second. "I, ah . . . don't think I've ever seen you at one of these before. Are you . . . new, in the arcade?"

Ralph looked up at her in dumb silence for a few seconds. Then, out of nowhere, surprising even himself, his mouth contorted into a goofy grin and he burst out laughing. Cynthia blinked at him.

"Ah, ha ha haaaaa . . . _new _in the arcade . . . ahhh, ha ha, that's a good one. Listen . . .uh . . . Cynthia, right?"

The pink-haired dancer nodded, looking slightly confused.

"Listen, Cynthia. You look like a pretty smart girl, I think you know what's going on here. Take a good look at me," he gestured to his face with one hand, and the girl raised an eyebrow quizzically at him. "Now answer me this. Would you, _ever, _in your entire _life, ever _be interested in going out with a guy like me?"

Cynthia froze, shifting uncomfortably and biting her bottom lip. "You . . . you mean . . . honestly?"

"For Pete's sake, _yes. Honestly."_

Cynthia gave him an apologetic look, then shook her head. "No."

Ralph nodded knowingly. "Uh-huh. That's what I thought."

"Not in a million years. No offense."

"Sounds about right," Ralph muttered, half-smiling. "I have a couple friends who thought it would be a good idea to try and set me up with someone at this party. You can probably imagine how well _that's _been going."

"Oooooh, wait a second," Cynthia said, narrowing her eyes. "You're Wreck-It Ralph, you said? The same Wreck-It Ralph who that scary army chick's been dragging half the women at this party over to meet?"

"Yyyyyup."

"Ahhh," Cynthia winced. "Yeah, I think you may have met a couple of my friends already."

"Holly, Jasmine, Monica, Brittany and Tori," Ralph mechanically counted off on his fingers the names of the other dancers who'd been subjected to him. "Met 'em, scared 'em away. Speaking of which, um . . . the next time you see . . . ah, which one was it . . . Monica? Could you tell her, again, that I'm _really sorry _for breaking her toe?"

"Oh, sure," Cynthia waved him off. "Don't worry about that. She'll be fine when the game resets in the morning. Not the first time she's gotten her foot stepped on at a party."

"Yeah . . . well," Ralph shrugged. "What can I say? I guess . . . I'm just not cut out for this kind of thing, after all."

Cynthia was quiet for a moment, then gave him a sympathetic smile. "I don't know. You seem like a nice enough guy, maybe . . . maybe you just haven't met . . . you know, the _one, _yet."

Ralph sighed. "After tonight, I'm pretty convinced that the _one _for _me _doesn't exist."

"Well . . . it's none of my business, really, but . . . I guess the best advice is just, _don't give up, _you know?"

Ralph exchanged melancholy glances with her, then hunched further forward on the bar and nodded reluctantly.

"I guess. Thanks . . . er . . ."

"Cynthia."

"Yeah, right, Cynthia. Got it."

They were quiet for a few minutes, listening to the jeering sounds of the remaining party guests. The song that was playing on the game screen ended, and after a few seconds of silence, a new one started up, the beat much faster and livelier. The small group of dancers cheered and the next two in line jumped up to the platforms. Suddenly, Cynthia stood up and tapped Ralph gently on the shoulder. He looked up in surprise.

"Do you dance?" she asked, in an abruptly friendly voice.

Ralph's eyes widened instantly and he held up his hands, as if trying to stop her train of thought right there at the station.

"_No, _no. Absolutely not."

"Awwww, come on. _Every_body has to dance at least _once _at a DDR block party! Come _on."_

She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to his feet off the barstool, ignoring his cries of protest. Struck practically dumb by the idea of getting up in front of the crowd - even what little was left of it - and trying to _dance, _Ralph went momentarily speechless and numb, and before he knew it he had allowed himself to be dragged across the party, up the small staircase leading to the stage, and up to the front of the line of characters and avatars waiting for their turn on the platform.

"Hey, Cynthia, what _gives?" _the avatar on the dance platform snapped at her as she abruptly came up behind him and pushed him off.

"Lighten up, _Keith, _this guy's been waiting all night. Come on, Ralph, just one song! Give it a try!"

Ralph opened his mouth, but to his horror, no sound came out. He just stood there like a deer in headlights, his gaze trolling out over the party as one of the spotlights turned and beamed straight on him, illuminating him for everyone to see.

When the remaining party crowd realized who it was now standing on the game stage, a collective hush fell over the room. Someone . . . he was pretty sure it was Vikarella . . . burst into loud, melodramatic sobbing and ran from the dance floor.

For one horrible moment, it was as if everything froze. Everything except the game screen, which scrolled up into place as the first few dancing bars of the song sounded loudly, resonating in the now still room. The first few dance arrows rolled up behind Ralph, the fail buzzers blaring loudly at each one that went un-hit. The silence in the crowd broke into a low murmur of annoyance.

"Don't just waste the game, man, _dance _if you're gonna stand up there!" Keith shouted at him from nearby.

Ralph began to sweat from the heat of the spotlight and the dozens of eyes drilling into him from below the stage. He tugged nervously at the collar of his sweater, still rooted to the spot. More fail buzzers sounded from behind him, and the crowd began to _boo _loudly.

Then, suddenly, just as he was contemplating the idea of punching a hole in the floor and hiding inside of it, a familiar, green blur caught Ralph's eye in the crowd. He squinted through the glare of the spotlight, searched for a few seconds, then saw them . . . it was Vanellope, swaying precariously on Felix's shoulders, who in turn was perched on Calhoun's shoulders, the three of them forming a tall, wobbling human tower sticking up over the heads of the crowd. Vanellope caught Ralph's eyes with her own and shot him a hard, unyielding stare, one that said to him as clearly as if she were speaking,

_You can do this, Ralph. You're the man. You are the __**MAN.**_

Then, the next thing he knew, Vanellope was screaming over the sound of the music, every head on the dance floor turning to look at her.

"_You can do it, Ralphie!" _she was shouting, her hands cupped around her mouth. "Come on, show us what you've got! _Wreck-It Ralph, Wreck-It Ralph, Wreck-It Ralph!" _she chanted over and over, waving her hands at the crowd to join in.

Then . . . he could hardly believe it . . . slowly, steadily, other characters actually began to chant along with her. The voices multiplied, and grew louder and stronger, until suddenly the music of the game had almost vanished behind the audible wall of voices, all chanting fiercely together.

"_WRECK-IT-RALPH! WRECK-IT-RALPH! WRECK-IT-RALPH!"_

He caught one final glimpse of Vanellope, and she shot him a thumbs up.

It was like something burst inside of him. Before he knew what he was doing, Ralph had spun around to face the game screen, and a huge cheer erupted from below the stage. The music blared, the next arrow crawled up into place, and Ralph lifted his foot and slammed on the corresponding pad set into the platform.

"_Almost!" _the programmed voice of the game called out enthusiastically, and the crowd cheered again.

A strange sensation overtook him. His gaze was fixed on the scrolling arrows, his heart was in his mouth, nervous sweat was beading on his forehead, his arms hovering at his sides in anticipation of the next dance move . . . he was _doing it, _he was _dancing! _Well . . . sort of . . . he was missing more than half the arrows, and his feet were a little too big for the floor pads, so he was doing a fair amount of stumbling and had to regain his balance every few seconds . . . but the crowd didn't seem to care. They were _actually cheering him on. _His head seemed to get fuzzier and fuzzier, his spirits soaring with the excitement . . . he had never felt anything like this before. It was intoxicating, _consuming. _He danced, they cheered. The game egged him on, the fail buzzer rang every few seconds, it made no difference . . . they were _cheering for him._

_Was this . . . was this really what it was like to be . . . well, popular?_

_Was this what it was like to be a good guy?_

"Sudden, DEATH, _OVERTIME!" _the game announcer called. The crowd clapped and roared responsively.

"You can do it, Ralph!" someone shouted from nearby. He saw out of the corner of his eye that it was Cynthia.

New colors washed over the game screen, and the tempo of the music increased rapidly. Suddenly, there were arrows, arrows everywhere . . . they were rolling up so fast that he missed practically all of them. The rhythm of the music began to get wonkier and more out of sync with every step that he missed . . . and then, suddenly, out of nowhere, part of the crowd was booing him.

Caught up completely in the frenzy of the game, Ralph stumbled and stomped his foot too hard on the left arrow. He only barely noticed as a thin crack appeared in the floor tile and that end of the platform gave way ever so slightly. The music kept racing and the arrows kept flying. He let out a small roar of frustration, and suddenly, almost not knowing what he was doing, he had jumped back off the dance platform, dropped to his knees, and started hitting the arrows with his fists instead of his feet.

The game music instantly corrected itself as his performance exponentially improved. He grinned triumphantly up at the screen, the announcer now barely able to keep up with him, calling out "_Perfect!" "Excellent!" "You've got it!" "Nailed it!" _so rapidly that there were barely any pauses between his exclamations. The crowd behind him was practically roaring over the sound of the music, and Cynthia was jumping up and down beside him, cheering.

Then, as the bonus level neared completion, the game sped up even further. Ralph narrowed his brow in concentration, still grinning, and hunched even lower over the platform, his fists pummeling the arrow pads so fast that his arms were almost a blur.

"_DOUBLE BONUS ROUND!" _the game squawked.

There was a brief pause, a moment when the game screen went blank. The crowd was dead silent, everyone leaning forward and holding their collective breath with anticipation.

A glowing, triple point stream of arrows appeared and flew up towards the top of the screen . . . and that was when it happened.

Ralph pulled back one arm, his fist balled tightly and almost trembling with anticipation. The arrow approached, faster and faster, almost there . . .

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

In the middle of the crowd, still sitting on Felix's shoulders and swaying slightly from side to side, Vanellope saw Ralph's arm pull back. Her smile vanished.

"Oh . . . _no," _she whispered to herself, as what was about to happen suddenly dawned on her. "Ralph . . . oh, Ralph, come on, don't do it . . . be _careful, be careful . . ."_

The first arrow slid into its placeholder, blazing brightly as the music burst out louder than ever.

Ralph tightened his fist, let out a triumphant yell, and _punched._

_**KRRRRRAAAAACCK!**_

All in one sudden, stupefying instant, the hairline cracks that had been slowly accumulating in the dance platform burst, the entire thing splitting into fragments and exploding in a shower of shattered plastic. The game music blipped once, then faded into silence. Ralph's fist plunged straight through the stage, the entire space around him cracking and collapsing. The tremendous impact spread like an earthquake tremor, a thick, ugly crack running straight out behind and in front of the dance platform, traveling up the wall and cracking the glass game screen with a frightening, electronic _KRUNCH _and a shower of sparks. The image on the screen fizzled, then went black. Finally, with one last moaning, exhausted creak, the rest of the stage gave way with a deafening crash and a billowing cloud of dust. The DDR avatars and other characters that had been lined up on the stage gave a collective shriek as the floor crumbled beneath them, and everything - stage, avatars, platforms, and, somewhere in the middle of it all, _Ralph -_ collapsed together in an enormous heap . . . then lay completely still.

For one long, long moment, the entire game was deathly silent.

Every eye in the room was fixed on the ruined stage, every mouth agape. Vanellope's arms hung limply down at her sides as she stared, slack-jawed and horrified. A second later, her brain snapped out of the shock and she scrambled madly down from Felix's shoulders, practically falling to her feet on the floor as she took off at a frantic dash for the stage, cursing the fact that she couldn't use her glitch teleport outside of her own game.

"_Ralph!" _she shrieked hoarsely, her voice the only sound that echoed in the dumbstruck room.

She climbed furiously over the mounds of wreckage and the other characters, who were moaning and half-buried in debris, but otherwise unhurt. She stopped at the center of the collapse, tossing her head desperately in every direction as she searched the destruction for any sign of her friend.

"_Ralph?" _she cried out again, a note of panic creeping into her voice.

Then, she yelped in surprise and jumped a foot in the air as an enormous fist suddenly punched upward out of the wreckage not two feet in front of her. She watched, jumping frantically and impatiently from foot to foot, as Ralph crawled his way up from underneath the collapsed stage, pushing huge beams and broken panels off of his shoulders, coughing and shaking the dust from his head as he emerged. She waited until he had completely disengaged himself from the debris, then lunged at him.

"Ralph! Ralph, are you ok? Are you hurt?" she demanded, darting all around him and looking him up and down. His sweater was torn from the neck down to his right wrist, and he was covered in dust and flecks of plaster, but other than that, he appeared to be unscathed.

Ralph didn't answer her. He stood up shakily, coughing once more and slowly looking up, his expression still blank with shock at what he'd just done. Vanellope turned to follow his gaze, and her heart sank when she saw every eye in the room burning into her friend simultaneously, forming one big, vicious, incredulous glare.

Looking around with an almost frightened expression, Ralph stumbled forward out of the collapsed stage, Vanellope following closely at his side. He didn't seem to notice her. The DDR avatars had all risen woozily to their feet and were huddled in a shell-shocked group, staring at Ralph with stunned, speechless rage. One dancer with electric pink hair . . . the one who had dragged Ralph up on the stage in the first place . . . was hunched over, clutching at her arm and glaring at him with a seething combination of anger and utter disbelief.

For another long, awful moment, nobody spoke. Felix and Calhoun stood far away in the back of the crowd, staring helplessly.

Then, without saying a word, Ralph turned and bolted for the exit. He ran straight through the crowd on the dance floor, the other characters parting like the Red Sea in front of him, but never lifting their infuriated stares.

"Ralph, _wait!" _Vanellope called frantically after him, her eyes beginning to shine faintly with unshed tears. She tried to run after him, but it was too late. He had pushed his way to the far end of the enormous room, pried open the circular door, and disappeared through the portal before she could even climb down from the ruined stage.

Felix and Calhoun ran up to meet Vanellope at the foot of the wreckage, but when they all straightened up and looked each other in the eye . . . none of them could think of anything to say.


	7. Chapter 6: Revelation

A/N: *quoting self* . . . "Yeah, durrr, don't know when I'll update again, might be a while, durr hurr . . ." Oh, wait, LOL, just kidding guys. *ignores real life responsibilities and updates less than a week later*

Seriously, if people are ever half as addicted to reading this kooky thing as I am to writing it, I'll be a happy camper.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 6: . . . . . Revelation_

As Ralph slowed to a brisk walk at the end of the DDR tunnel and fazed through the portal back into Game central station, he was short of breath; whether it was simply a result of sprinting out of the game and taking the length of the tunnel at a dead run, or a lingering effect of the sheer awfulness of what had just happened on the stage, he wasn't sure - and he didn't care. The second he passed through the gate, the surge protector popped up, reliable as clockwork, looking down at his clipboard with mouth already open to deliver the typical inquiries . . . . and Ralph, without pausing, clamped one hand over his blue face and pushed him right over like a domino, sprawling to the floor flat on his back. The SP was so stunned that by the time he sat up and found his glasses, Ralph was long gone, storming across the station and fazing into Fix-It Felix Jr. without looking back.

Ralph crammed himself unceremoniously into the last car of the little blue train, and sat there staring down at his feet as it lurched forward. He didn't look up when the train entered the tunnel, engulfing him in darkness . . . or when it exited, rattling into the starlit, permanent nighttime of his game . . . or when it came to a clattering halt at the end of the tracks beside Fix-It Felix station. The instant the train came to a stop, he pulled himself out of the little car - with the usual difficulty - and made a beeline straight for East Niceland, his head never once lifting, his gaze still fixed on the ground in front of him.

It took Ralph approximately fifty paces to walk from the train station to the entry to the East half of the game. When he began at pace one, he was still almost completely numb with the pure shock and embarrassment of what had happened in DDR, so much so that he almost hadn't registered any emotion beyond the anxious urge to escape it all. By pace twenty-five, the shock had begun to wear off, replaced with an ever-increasing weight of crushing humiliation - combined with a grim, miserable sort of satisfaction that the small, nagging voice inside of him, telling him that he was an idiot for even attempting the whole scheme in the first place, had been right all along.

By pace fifty, as he came to sudden halt beneath the brick archway of East Niceland, all of the disappointment and mortification had balled up together into a single, horrendous knot at the bottom of his throat . . . and out of that knot, running in hot cords up through his shoulders, into his arms, the tips of his fingers, all the way down to the soles of his feet . . . was _anger._

All of a sudden, he felt as if he was going to explode from all of the anger building up inside of him. The red-hot temper that was programmed deep into the code of his personality . . . the temper that had been lying almost dormant for the majority of the past year . . . flared up, without the slightest warning, like a burst of steam screaming from a broken pressure valve, and he was _furious._

Furious with _himself_.

Furious with the brick gate that was unfortunate enough to be next to him at that precise moment.

"RrrraaAAAAAGGGH_HHAAGGHhhaaa!"_

With an enraged, deafening roar that seemed to echo in the tranquil silence of the game, Ralph clenched his fist, pulled back, and punched the cornerstone of the archway as hard as he could. The thick, concrete slab cracked like a sugar cube and collapsed in a cloud of dust, taking five feet of brick wall down with it. The now disconnected left half of the arch hung there for a few seconds, clinging tenuously to the remaining mortar, and then crumbled down with a slow, heavy _kkkrrraaack. _A small shower of bricks pummeled Ralph's shoulders, but they might have been raindrops for all he noticed. He was staring straight forward, but seeing nothing but red, breathing heavily, his chest heaving up and down. With another savage yell, he took off at a thundering run towards the dump, jumping into the air and crashing down with both fists onto the story-high mound of bricks.

_BBRRKKKKOOOM! _

"Stupid, stupid, _stupid, STUPID!" _he shouted furiously, his voice roaring louder and louder as he delivered a seismic downward punch in time with every word. "_Couldn't . . . just . . . leave . . . well . . . enough . . . ALONE! STUPID!"_

The bricks crumbled incrementally into dust under his knuckles, the heap he was standing on quaking and collapsing with every blow until he finally lost his balance and slid backwards down to the grass on a small, rust-red avalanche . . . which served only to exacerbate his boiling rage, winding his muscles up tighter and tighter until he felt like he might snap if he didn't wreck something else.

Spinning on his heel and snorting like a bull, Ralph dashed at the first unlucky object his eyes fell on next . . . his own small, one-story brick shack sitting innocently a dozen yards in front of the dump.

He obliterated the southeast corner of his house with one running punch, bricks and mortar exploding from his fist and sailing through the air like shrapnel. The roof creaked and pitched toward the now missing corner of the structure, but Ralph paid it no attention. He slugged the south wall with both hands balled together in a horizontal baseball swing, then spun around immediately and punched out half of the west wall. His heart was pounding in his chest like a hammer. He clenched his teeth, whirling from the wreckage, ready to rip apart the rest of his house like cardboard . . . when the roof caved in.

For the second time in less than twenty minutes, Ralph yelped in shock as he was buried underneath a heap of collapsing rubble. One of the support beams from his ceiling fell down and conked him clean on the head, knocking him to the ground as great slabs of plaster, wood and roofing tile came crashing down on top of him.

Less than ten seconds after the last few crumbs of the roof dropped down - before the dust had even begun to clear - Ralph burst up out of the debris, growling angrily and pushing off the heavy remnants of the roof like they were made of snow. He stood there for a few seconds, fists still clenched, chest still heaving . . . then looked down and saw that his dark green sweater was now hanging off of him in shreds, loose ends of yarn splitting and unraveling around two long tears running straight down each arm.

He wasn't sure why, at that exact instant, but for some reason, that was the last straw. With one more bitter, defeated snarl, Ralph ripped off what was left of the sweater, balled it up in his fists, and threw it as hard as he could at the only corner of his house left standing. It bounced off the wall and landed on his bed, bringing down a few more gales of plaster dust and knocking something askew that was hanging over the headboard. The little trinket hung there haphazardly for an instant, then dropped from the wall.

Ralph raised both hands high over his head, ready to bring them thundering down and crack apart the whole stinking _block, _if he wanted . . . when suddenly, the brightly-colored object lying on the bed caught the corner of his eye, and he stopped. Wobbling off balance, he dropped his arms back down to his sides, his angry, heaving breath gradually slowing to a calm. He stood up straight, blinking as if waking up suddenly from a dream, and took a few cautious steps toward his bed. He came to a stop beside it and looked down, his heart hardening inside him like a stone.

"No . . . _no . . . _oh, _no, no, _what have I done?" he whispered to himself.

There, lying on top of the shredded heap of green yarn, was another gift . . . the first real gift he'd ever received in his life, the gift he kept hung on the wall over his headboard so that he would see it every morning when he got up and every night before he went to sleep . . . the one possession that mattered most to him in the entire world. Lying on top of the ruined sweater was the medal that Vanellope had given him on the day they met.

It was cracked straight down the middle, the two halves of the broken cookie heart just barely clinging to the sour gummy neck-band.

In an instant, all of the rage and temper and frustration twisted up inside of him vanished - more quickly than it had appeared - and Ralph felt instead as if his insides were full of ice. Slowly, almost afraid to believe what he'd just done, he carefully picked up the pieces of the medal and cradled them in his palm, lifting them close to his face to inspect the damage, hoping that it wasn't as bad as it looked . . . but it was. The cursive words, _You're My Hero, _lettered over the rock-stale, sea-green frosted cookie in white piping, were split straight down the middle.

Just as a rising panic was about to overtake him, Ralph reminded himself that - of course - Felix could always fix it for him, along with everything else he had just ruined . . . but then, to his own chagrin, he discovered that that didn't really make him feel the slightest bit better. It wasn't just the thought of losing Vanellope's gift itself . . . it was the fact that he'd lashed out and broken it in the first place that really filled him with remorse.

It was the fact that no matter how hard or how many times he tried to control himself, to fit in . . . he always, _always, _just ended up . . . well, _wrecking_ things.

For one silent moment, Ralph just stood there, surrounded by the wreckage of his outburst, looking down at his broken medal. He closed his eyes, shoulders slumping in defeat, and gave a long, low sigh of shame and dejection.

_It didn't matter how he or anyone else tried to dress it up. When it came right down to it, he was still nothing but a wrecker, a bulldozer, a __**bad guy**__ . . . . just a walking pair of fists, waiting for something else to destroy._

Closing his fingers gently over the pieces of Vanellope's medal, Ralph turned around, picked his way to the middle of what minutes ago had been his small living room, and sat down on the pile of rubble, wishing he could curl into a ball and disappear.

_Who had he been trying to kid?_

_There was no Calhoun or Mrs. Pac-man waiting out there for him . . . no special someone he was meant to be with. She just plain didn't exist._

_He was meant to be alone._

_Right here . . . this was where he belonged . . . alone in a heap, with the rest of the junk._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph wasn't sure how long he had been sitting there when he suddenly heard the faint _clang clang _of the Niceland train as it started up by itself, rattling backwards down the tracks and vanishing into the tunnel. A few minutes later, it reappeared, a very tired-looked Felix sitting slumped in the front car, the brim of his hat slightly askew and his head hanging dejectedly. As Ralph watched Felix leave the train and drag his feet slowly toward the apartment building, his stomach turned an embarrassed knot and he winced at the pile of wreckage that had recently been his house and the East Niceland gate. Doubtless, Felix was only returning to the game so late because he had dutifully stayed behind in Dance Dance Revolution to repair all the damage Ralph had done to the stage . . . he was _not_ looking forward to having to stand there in front of his smashed house and sheepishly ask Felix, _yet again, _to fix something he had broken. Sighing, Ralph stood up from the heap of plaster and bricks and made his way reluctantly toward the gate.

Felix made it halfway to the apartment building before he looked up and noticed the pulverized entrance to East Niceland. Ralph stood next to the shattered concrete cornerstone, rubbing his forearm and forcing a tiny, painfully embarrassed smile. Felix returned his gaze with an only mildly surprised stare.

"Hi, uh, Felix. I had . . . sort of an accident," Ralph mumbled, trailing off under his breath and averting his eyes.

To Ralph's surprise, Felix said nothing . . . didn't groan, or roll his eyes, or even sigh . . . but simply stood up straight, calmly approached the arch, and gave him a warm, sympathetic smile. He lifted his golden hammer from its holster and saluted with it.

"I can fix that."

Five minutes later, the two of them were sitting side by side on the front stoop of Ralph's freshly repaired cottage, looking up at the pixilated stars. A few of the windows in the apartment building had lit up and the curtains peeped curiously while Ralph was making such a commotion down in the dump, but now the entire building was dark and silent again. The arcade would be opening in just a few hours . . . Ralph felt a sharp twinge of guilt when Felix suddenly yawned widely and stretched his short arms.

"_Aaaaauuuh! _My land, excuse _me_. Haven't had this much excitement on a Sunday night in a long time. You know . . . " Felix said, suddenly turning to look at Ralph from the corner of his eye, " . . . after you . . . er . . . left the party, Ralph . . . it was all Tammy and I could do to keep Miss Von Schweetz from following you. She was _awfully_ worried, but we convinced her it might be best if she gave you some time to yourself. And . . . ha . . . well, judging by the state of things here, I guess we were right," Felix joked cautiously, tilting his head toward Ralph's house. Ralph's ears perked up at the mention of his friend's name.

"Vanellope," he muttered, turning and opening his hand so Felix could see into his palm. "That reminds me . . . Felix, there's, er, one more thing . . . do you think you could . . . ?"

Felix's face drooped sadly when he saw the pieces of the broken candy medal. He nodded in polite silence and gently tapped the fragments in Ralph's hand with his hammer. There was a happy _bid-a-ling! _sound, and the pieces magically fit back together, good as new. Ralph smiled and held the medal close to his face, beaming at it for just a moment, then carefully closed his fingers back around it.

"Thanks, Felix . . . for everything. You really are a good friend."

Felix smiled appreciatively, patting him once on the forearm. "Back at you, brother," he said softly. Then, a thought visibly crossed his mind and his smile quickly vanished. "Ralph. I'm sorry about what happened in DDR tonight."

Ralph instantly felt his face grow warm, and he turned away slightly to hide the embarrassed color in his cheeks.

"_Aaaah, _what,that little thing?" he unconvincingly waved his hand in dismissal. "That was nothing. I just . . . I mean . . . I'm just sorry you had to stay there late to clean up after me."

"I'm not just talking about what happened on stage, Ralph," Felix answered him, his voice serious. "I'm talking about . . . before. At the bar."

The faint pink glow on Ralph's face flushed into full blown redness. He involuntarily cleared his throat.

"Yeah, well . . . you know, I guess . . . I guess I just . . . just . . . " he stammered for a few seconds, then stopped. He couldn't think of anything to say to gloss it over, and suddenly, looking down at Felix's understanding expression . . . he didn't care.

Ralph hunched further forward on the stoop, hanging his head and letting out a long, tired sigh of finality.

"I guess there just isn't anyone out there for a guy like me," he muttered deep in his throat. "And it was dumb of me to think there ever was."

Felix was quiet for a moment. If Ralph had looked up, he would have been surprised at the amount of empathetic sadness on his protagonist's face. After a minute or so of silence, Felix looked up at the sky and narrowed his eyes, as if seeing something there that made him think. He kept his gaze lifted as he spoke.

"Ralph," he said directly, thoughtfully. "We've been doing this job for a long, _long_ time. With Pac-man locked in shutdown, Fix-It Felix Jr. is the oldest working game in this arcade, and . . . you and I . . . we've been through a lot together, haven't we?"

Ralph nodded absently, still staring down at the ground. "Thirty-one years and counting," he mumbled unenthusiastically.

"Thirty-one years. That's right. And yet . . ." Felix paused, took off his cap, and sighed quietly. " . . . and yet . . . I'm ashamed to say that for the vast majority of those years, I . . . I haven't treated you the way I should have, Ralph."

Ralph looked up in surprise, his eyes widening slightly. He turned toward Felix. "No! No, that's not true, you . . . I mean . . . you were _always . . . _always . . . "

" . . . a nice guy?" Felix finished for him, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, being a nice guy wasn't enough, Ralph. I should have reached out to you, gotten to know you . . . golly gee, I could have at _least_ come on out here and _talked to you_ once in a while! I should have been your _friend, _Ralph. And instead, I . . . I just ignored you. All those nights you spent out here alone, I just let myself believe you were happy as a clam, and everything was the way it should be . . . 'He's the _bad guy_, he probably _wants _to be left alone!'" Felix raised his voice incredulously, tossing his hands in the air and shaking his head disappointedly at himself, sighing loudly again. He looked up and stared Ralph straight in the eye.

"Ralph," he said sternly, deliberately. "I am sorry for the way I treated you all those years. I'm sorry for the way we _all _treated you."

Ralph was speechless. He just sat there, staring back, not knowing what to say. Felix and the Nicelanders had been friendly and kind to him ever since their Out-of-Order scare last year had made them realize how much they needed him, and he had been so elated by the change that he honestly hadn't given another thought to the way things used to be . . . . but this was the first time that anyone had actually come out and _apologized _to him. He didn't know what to do.

"And _then, _that day when you disappeared, and we were afraid you'd gone Turbo on us . . . " Felix continued. ". . . I was _sure _that you were just another bad guy gone . . . well, _bad. _And look how things turned out, Ralph! You ended up saving the lives of every character in Sugar Rush . . . in the entire _arcade, _even."

"Whoa, whoa, come on, now, Felix," Ralph protested, stammering slightly with embarrassment. "Let's not get carried away. Aren't you forgetting that I'm the one who _let the cybug out _in the first place? If it hadn't been for me, the whole thing never would have - "

"If it hadn't been for _you, _every game in this arcade could have been destroyed by those monsters," Felix cut him off firmly. "If it hadn't been for you, Ralph, _Turbo_ would still be in control of Sugar Rush_, _and Vanellope never would have gotten her life back. If it weren't for you, Q*bert and all of his friends would still be homeless. If it weren't for you . . . if it weren't for you, Ralph, I never would have met my soul mate."

Ralph had his mouth open throughout the speech, ready to argue again . . . then stopped suddenly at Felix's last words. He turned away and looked back down at the ground, genuinely stunned. He had honestly never thought of it that way. Felix rested one gloved hand on his arm again.

"My point, Ralph . . . is that people can surprise you. You sure as _shoot_ surprised all of us, in ways we never would have imagined. You're not just a bad guy . . . you're a _terrific _bad guy, brother."

Ralph looked up in surprise at hearing Felix unknowingly use Vanellope's exact words from earlier.

"And . . . " Felix continued, patting his arm once and then standing up to look him in the face, " . . . just because you didn't find _your _soul mate tonight, doesn't mean she's not out there. It just means you've got to keep looking. Don't give up. You never know who might surprise you."

Felix gave him one more quiet, encouraging smile, then turned and started walking towards the apartment building. He paused briefly at the brick gate, looking over his shoulder and calling back,

"It's getting awfully late. You better try and get a few hours sleep before the arcade opens. I want to see you bright-eyed and ready to wreck, first thing in the morning!"

Ralph got up slowly and stood on the front stoop of his house, watching speechlessly as the diminutive superintendent walked further and further away. Finally, just as Felix was about to open the door and disappear inside the apartment building, Ralph found his voice, cupping one hand around his mouth and calling out through the calm stillness of the night.

"FELIX," he projected loudly. His friend paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned around, listening. Ralph hesitated for a second, unconsciously holding Vanellope's medal a little tighter.

"Felix, I . . . . I'm lucky to have you for a good guy," he said, just loudly enough so that he could be heard.

Felix smiled, meaningfully touched the brim of his hat, and went inside the building.

Ralph stared for a few seconds longer at the place where he'd been . . . gave a small, thoughtful sigh . . . then stepped into his house and shut the door behind him.


	8. Chapter 7: Enter the Ying

A/N: Soooo, yeah . . . as a couple reviewers have pointed out, the orange Pac-man ghost's name is Clyde. Guess that'll teach me to read the whole Wikipedia article when researching. Please to ignore embarrassing oversight of earlier chapters.

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 7: Enter, the Ying_

The next day went by for Ralph in a slow, monotonous blur. It being summer time - Litwak's busy season - the arcade was packed all day, in spite of it being Monday. Fix-It Felix Jr. must have had more than twenty gamers before it was even noon, practically a new record . . . but Ralph barely gave it a second thought. Even while he was standing at the top of the building in the ruined penthouse, actively pounding on the floor and sending showers of bricks down on top of Felix . . . his mind was somewhere else. He couldn't stop reliving the events of the previous night . . . Vanellope and the sweater, Calhoun and Nina Williams, the countless women who'd laughed in his face at the bar . . . worst of all, the moment when he'd punched straight through the DDR dance floor and destroyed half the game . . . the furious looks on the characters' faces . . . breaking Vanellope's medal on accident . . . and then, he kept hearing Felix's voice in head, repeating what he'd said on Ralph's front stoop . . .

_People can surprise you, Ralph. You've just got to keep looking. Don't give up._

_People can surprise you . . . . but . . . how? _he couldn't help asking himself.

_What would ever change? _

The bustling Monday came and went. Before Ralph knew it, it was minutes to closing time, and he, Felix, and the others were finally on their last game of the day.

_You're not just a bad guy . . . you're a terrific bad guy._

_Don't give up._

"Don't give up," Ralph murmured thoughtfully to himself, not even glancing at the Nicelanders as he fell onto their waiting hands. They lifted him up and carried him to the edge of the building for what must have been at least the hundredth time that day.

The second before he was about to be tossed off of the roof, Ralph happened to glance over towards the screen - and something over the gamer's shoulder, almost hidden in the far right corner of his visibility, caught his eye.

It was Litwak. He was talking to another man in a black shirt and black baseball cap - Ralph vaguely recognized him as one of the repairmen who made usual maintenance visits to the arcade - and the two of them were carefully adjusting something into position. Ralph lifted his head up as high as he could without being conspicuous, straining to see beyond the edge of the screen window . . . he thought he caught a glimpse of Litwak meticulously inching into place what looked like an unfamiliar game console, taller than all the others around it, and _white, _of all colors, without so much as a single design or decal to disrupt its blank sides. Ralph didn't think he'd ever seen a pure white game console before - it was awkward-looking, to say the least.

Litwak was just straightening up, massaging his back from the effort of moving the console when the Nicelanders pushed up in unison with their tiny arms, and Ralph felt himself sailing over the edge of the building. Litwak, the repairman, and the new console vanished from view, the world spun in circles for a few seconds, and then he landed . . . with the same, familiar _splat . . . _in his face, in the mud.

From outside the game, he could just hear Litwak's voice, fuzzy and distant, as he said loudly, "Alright, kids, last call! Finish up your game, and clear on out."

Ralph waited patiently, facedown in the mud, until the arcade was finally empty and Litwak had shut the lights off, locking the door behind him as he left.

"Quittin' time!" Felix sounded his regular call from up on the roof. Ralph got to his feet, wiping the mud off as he looked up thoughtfully at the empty game screen.

_So . . . Litwak was bringing in a new game, huh? Right across the aisle from Sugar Rush, too. It seemed like ages since the arcade had had a new game._

Ralph pondered vaguely on the idea for a few more seconds, then shrugged it off. Now that work was over, he was too preoccupied with another questioning train of thought . . . whether or not to tell the truth about what had happened in DDR to his fellow Bad-Anon-ers at their meeting that night. Hanging his shoulders as he trudged his way toward the train station, he admitted to himself the depressing likelihood that the news of his little "accident" had already circulated through half of Litwak's. At least one character from practically every game in the arcade had been there to witness it, and stories like that had a habit of traveling fast. He briefly considered simply not showing up that week . . . then remembered that he had promised himself he would check on Clyde and get a Pac-down status update. Sighing inwardly and rolling his tired shoulders, Ralph clambered into the last car on the train and held his head in one hand as it rattled out of the station, resigning himself to an inevitably unpleasant evening.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph had never been to Mrs. Pac-man before. He had to search for a few minutes in Game Central station before he found the entrance; it turned out to be just two gates down from Sugar Rush, and as he passed by he got a faint, familiar whiff of a candy-scented draft emanating from the tunnel. He remembered what Felix had said about Vanellope, and he was immediately struck by the guilty realization that he hadn't even so much as looked at her before bolting out of DDR the night before.

_It was all Tammy and I could do to keep her from following you. She was awfully worried._

_Vanellope . . ._

Ralph sighed heavily, turning his head to look back at the Sugar Rush gate as he lumbered reticently on to Mrs. Pac-man. _And after all she'd tried to do for him, too . . . . sometimes he really __**was **__just a big, selfish baby. _Ralph resolved firmly to go to Sugar Rush as soon as his meeting was over, find Vanellope, and apologize to her.

As he fazed through the portal to the start of the Mrs. Pac-man tunnel ( _without _being stopped by a surge protector, for once - he would have pushed that guy on his butt years ago, if he'd known that was all it took to make him lay off ), Ralph spotted a handful of other Bad-Anon members already boarding the shuttle. He paused at the bottom of the stairs, briefly reconsidering the idea of not attending that particular night . . . but then, it was too late. Zangief had already noticed him standing there and was waving him over enthusiastically. Ralph waved back, forcing a smile as he climbed the stairs and plunked down next to the infamous Streetfighter villain. The shuttle bobbed slightly under his weight.

"Eeeehhh, Ralph, comrade!" Zangief greeted him warmly, clapping him on the back hard enough to knock the breath out of him. "Good to see you again."

"Heh . . . yeah. Back at you, pal."

"So, Wrecking Man. It so happens that on his way to the Mrs. Pac-man this evening, Zangief is hearing some interesting news around arcade. You know what it is?"

Ralph flinched imperceptibly, forbidding himself to groan out loud. _Already? Before he even got to the meeting?_

"No, what news?" he bluffed, averting his eyes briefly and bracing himself for the awkwardness. Zangief leaned toward him as the shuttle set off from the platform and zoomed into the long, dark passage leading to the game.

"Well, you didn't hear from _me, _but . . . rumor has it, Litwak is planning _restart of Pac-man _in morning!"

Ralph jerked his head, eyes wide in surprise. "He _is? _Well that's . . . ha, that's _great!"_

_"Shhh!" _Zangief shushed him, eyeing the other bad guys seated with them on the shuttle. "Is only _rumor, _Ralph. Let no one say Zangief is guilty of spreading the rumors."

Ralph made a confused face. "But you just told m - "

"I tell you, you _didn't_ _hear it from me," _Zangief cut him off, giving him an overly-zealous wink.

Ralph opened his mouth to speak again, then thought better of it and simply smiled with relief, mentally crossing his fingers and hoping that the rumor was not only true, but that it would _also _make everyone forget all about any gossip they might have heard concerning last night's DDR party.

Presently, the shuttle arrived in Mrs. Pac-man. Being nearly identical to its locked-down counterpart, Ralph and the others had no difficulty finding their way to the center of maze and their new, temporary Bad-Anon meeting space. Once there, Ralph quickly took his seat and tried to look inconspicuous, deliberately avoiding eye contact with the other bad guys as they poured cups off coffee and made the usual weekly small talk.

A few minutes later, Clyde appeared, floating hurriedly in from the hallway and moving to his usual place in the circle. As soon as they all saw he was there, everyone began talking at once, repeating the same condolences and inquiries about the status of the Pac-down, their voices filling the small room with a chaotic din. Ralph remained pointedly silent, his hands clasped quietly in front of him and his gaze darting nervously around the room.

_This was good, this was good . . . maybe he'd make it through this meeting without having to talk about it after all . . . . ._

"Yes, yes, thank you . . . thank you everyone," Clyde raised his voice gently over the chatter of the group, his calm, therapeutic tone immediately quieting them. "I'll be more than happy to give you the latest news, if you'd all just take your seats."

The bad guys obediently sat down, everyone except Ralph leaning eagerly on the edge of their seats. Clyde took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and exhaled . . . when he looked back up at the group, he was lit up with a relieved smile that spanned the width of his small, orange body.

"It's true!" he said happily, looking from face to face. "It's confirmed, Litwak is restarting us in the morning!"

Ralph's tense shoulders fell, relaxing with sympathetic relief. He and the other bad guys erupted in an enthusiastic cheer, everyone breaking into a warm round of applause and general _huzzah-_ing. Clyde beamed, waiting until they had quieted down again before continuing.

"Yes, it's certainly been a stressful week . . . but now, I and the other Paccers can _finally_ get back to normal. Thank you again, all of you, for your support during this crisis. I'm just grateful that we got news of the restart before anyone did anything _rash . . . _I'm sure some of you must have heard the rumor that Pac-man himself was considering making an attempt to actually enter the game _in emergency shutdown mode _and restart it _himself. _Well, I can tell you now that this was unfortunately true. We all tried to talk him out of it . . . it was practically _suicide. No one _has ever tried to enter a game locked in shutdown. There's no telling what might have happened to him."

A few characters - including Clyde - shuddered at the idea.

"Hey, shrink," M. Bison suddenly spoke up in his deep, growling voice, half raising his hand and inching further forward on his folding chair. "Not to kill the mood, but did anybody ever figure out _why _Litwak was pulling your plug to begin with?"

"As a matter of fact, _yes. _I'm glad you brought it up, Bison. As some of you probably know, Litwak was in with a repairman today, and the good people in Tapper's happened to overhear part of their conversation. It turns out, Litwak was only pulling our plug because he was considering a rearrangement of the arcade layout, to make room for a new game."

Ralph's ears perked up at the words_ new game. _He sat up straighter in his chair, leaning forward to listen.

"Then, it seems, when we initiated our internal emergency shutdown and Litwak saw the error message and then the screen darkening, he left us plugged in for fear that the power cut had done some damage to the game . . . ours being the oldest console in the arcade, and all. Evidently, he only waited so long to restart because he wanted to wait until the repairman had a chance to look us over first. But now, everything's been okayed, and he's decided to keep us where we are. We'll be back on in the morning, and able to resume our regular meeting place next week!"

The group applauded again, offering their friendly congratulations a final time. Ralph caught Clyde's eye and smiled supportively.

"See?" he said below the general hubbub, holding up his hands. "I _told _you, you guys had nothing to worry about. Litwak would _never_ get rid of Pac-man."

Clyde returned the smile appreciatively, then addressed the rest of the circle again. "Some of you may have noticed the new game console . . . it was stationed not far from here, directly across the aisle, in fact, in between Frogger and Rampage. It was just plugged in this evening, so naturally I haven't had the opportunity to meet anyone from it . . . but we'll be sure to invite any new bad guys to the next meeting, so we can give them a warm, Bad-Anon welcome, won't we?"

The group murmured positively in agreement. Ralph nodded, making a mental note to take a look between Frogger and Rampage in Game Central Station on his way to Sugar Rush.

"Well . . . now that all that's been cleared up, let's get started," Clyde began. "We'll kick off with a nice icebreaker. Anybody do anything interesting over the weekend? Anything they feel like sharing?"

There was a minute of stilted silence within the circle. Some characters shook their heads, a few muttered an obligatory "nope." Even though the group had been convening regularly for years, Bad-Anon meetings still all tended to begin the same way, with nobody wanting to be the first to speak, and no one really opening up until the awkward first few minutes had passed. Ralph quietly followed suit, twiddling his thumbs and looking around absently at different spots on the floor . . . then, suddenly, his heart skipped a beat when he glanced up and realized that Clyde was staring straight at him. Ralph quickly looked away again, pretending not to notice. The beginning of a nervous heat started up around the base of his neck.

"Come on, people, let's not be shy," Clyde coaxed. "_No one _has anything they'd like to share? Doesn't have to be anything fantastic, just something to get the ball rolling. Anybody?"

Ralph peeked from the corner of his eye. Clyde was _still _looking straight at him. When no one spoke after another thirty seconds, Clyde sighed exasperatedly.

"Okay, then, how about . . . mmm . . . _Ralph, _how about you?"

Ralph froze, the heat at the base of his neck rising up and a single bead of sweat budding on his forehead.

"Me?" he squeaked in feigned surprise, eyes shifting around the room. Everyone was now looking at him expectantly, obviously relieved that they hadn't been called on first. Ralph swallowed thickly and shook his head, perhaps a little too vigorously. "Nope, no, not a thing. Same old, same old."

Clyde pressed his mouth into a straight line and gave Ralph a look that told him, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that he knew about what had happened. He had probably heard the story from Pac-man. There was a split second of locked tension between their gazes that, to Ralph, seemed to last achingly long . . . then he blinked, and Clyde had looked away, silently communicating that he wasn't going to push it. Ralph held back an enormous sigh of relief, quickly wiping away the sweat bead with his finger and then tightly folding his hands again.

" . . . . alright, al_right," _someone in the circle suddenly blurted out, and every head turned toward the deep-throated, monstrous growl of a voice. "I've got something, if no one else does."

It was _Bowser_. Ralph raised one eyebrow in slight surprise . . . throughout the entire year he'd been coming to Bad-Anon, he couldn't remember Bowser ever once volunteering to speak first.

"Excellent!" Clyde encouraged gratefully. "Excellent. Let's hear what you have for us, Bowser."

The legendary, spike-shelled bad guy downed the last swallow of his coffee, then set the Styrofoam cup carefully on the floor by his feet and reluctantly addressed the group.

"Well . . . . to tell the truth, it's not really something I _did, _so much as something I _didn't _do. Yesterday was more or less a typical Sunday . . . I woke up, did my stretches, made breakfast, took a nice power-walk around the lava board . . . I've made a resolution to be more intentional with my fitness regimen, take better care of myself and all . . ."

"That's a great goal, Bowser," Clyde interjected supportively. "Remember, everyone, how we talked last week about setting attainable goals for ourselves? Anyway . . . please, go on."

Bowser scratched the side of his face thoughtfully with one claw and leaned back, his chair creaking. "So, yeah . . . just a normal Sunday, like any other, really . . . but then, last night, when I just ran out to pick up a few groceries, I was passing through Donut Plains 3, and I happened to run into _Mario _and the whole gang, and . . . you know, it's always a _little _awkward, but, last night . . . well, they were all on their way to a party in another game, and of course this was news to _me, _and then of course that wise guy _Toad _has to go and make some snide little remark he thinks I can't hear, and . . . . long story short, I guess, I sort of lost and my temper, and . . . I may have set Peach on fire, alright? Just a _little. _Like just the back half of her dress. I mean, they put her out in, what, like a minute and a half, they didn't have to get so upset about it."

The other bad guys nodded understandingly, a murmur of consent circling the room. Clyde hovered side to side in usually holding pattern and pursed his mouth responsively.

"We've all been there, Bowser. People can be insensitive, and the temptation to eat them, or set them on fire, or melt their brains with psychosis is _always _going to be there. But admitting your mistakes is the first step to avoiding them in the future. It's great that you're able to take an honest inventory of yourself."

"Thank you," Bowser growled, timidly avoiding Clyde's gaze. "I've been trying to do the anger release exercises you gave me twice a day, but . . . I don't know, for some reason the guys just _got _to me last night. Maybe it's because they've been going to the weekly dance party for _years_ now, and I've . . . well, I've never been invited _once."_

Ralph, who had been listening and nodding only half-interestedly, went rigid and shot his eyes open involuntarily. _Weekly __**dance **__party? Ah, geez . . . . ._

Clyde didn't waste a second. His gaze was immediately back on Ralph as he said enthusiastically to the group, "Now, _that's _something that I'm _sure_ each one of us can relate to. I know I don't have to tell any of you how frustrating it can be to be repeatedly left out and uninvited to social functions. That's a stigma that bad guys have been living with since the inception of _video gaming itself . . . . _'bad guys _ruin parties.' _It's a stereotype we all encounter. Show of hands . . . who else here has never been invited to the weekly get-together in Dance Dance Revolution?"

Everyone in the circle reluctantly raised their hands . . . . except Ralph. As soon as Clyde had begun to monologue, Ralph shrank into self-preservation mode and stared anxiously at a random space on the wall without taking in a single word the orange ghost said, muttering to himself over and over in his head . . .

_Please change the subject, please change the subject, please change the subject . . . ._

"Ralph?" Clyde said brightly, breaking him from his reverie with a startled twitch. Ralph looked around the room, spirits plummeting when he saw the raised hands and surprised looks from everyone besides himself.

"Ralph, _you've _been to a DDR block party?" Clyde pressed enthusiastically, with the unmistakable tone of someone asking a question they already know the answer to. "That's _wonderful. _Really, that's very inspiring to hear. Please, tell us about it!"

Suddenly, every eye in the room was trained straight at him, all the other bad guys - especially Bowser - leaning forward expectantly in their chairs. Ralph looked around, dumbfounded, and was struck with déjà vu from the night before like a bolt of lightning. A few more seconds of unbearable silence passed, then he finally cleared his throat and opened his mouth, searching frantically for words, any words.

"Go ahead, Ralph. Is safe environment here," Zangief urged him warmly.

"Ah . . . well, that is to say . . . I mean, I wouldn't exactly say I was _invited, _to the . . . the, uh, the party, last night . . ."

"Last night!" Clyde interjected gently. Ralph inwardly kicked himself. "So you _did _do something interesting this weekend. Please, share with us, Ralph. How did it go?"

The eyes pressing him, the room seeming to grow warmer and warmer, and Felix's words of reassurance suddenly popping up out of nowhere in his mind . . . all at once, Ralph heaved a heavy exhale, and decided to just give up the charade and consign himself to the truth.

"Ah, what the heck," he mumbled quietly, then sat up straighter and addressed the group. "You know what, Clyde? Bowser, everybody? I'll tell you how it went . . . _not well._ Sort of a disaster, in fact."

A low, communal mutter of sympathy went around the room. Dr. Robotnik, who was seated next to him, patted Ralph once on the shoulder. Clyde, to his surprise, looked genuinely startled, and just slightly guilty. _Maybe he hadn't known all the details after all? Oh well . . . too late now._

"Oh, that's . . . I'm sorry to hear that, Ralph," Clyde said apologetically.

Ralph shrugged, actually beginning to feel grateful that he'd been forced to open up. Already his memory of the previous night didn't seem quite as painful as it had been.

"Thanks, everybody. It's . . . I mean, it's not really a big deal, or anything."

"What happened, if you not mind my asking?" Zangief inquired.

Ralph made a face, awkwardly baring half his teeth. "Well . . . I may have sort of gotten a _little_ carried away on a round of dancing and . . . you know, destroyed the stage."

There was a collective _aaaah. _

"Hate when that happens," a robot with dual shoulder-mounted laser cannons muttered electronically.

" . . . and that in _itself, _wouldn't have been so bad. I mean, Felix . . . you guys remember Felix, my good guy? . . . he was there with me, and he fixed everything and all, it was more that - "

"Wait. You were out at the party, with your _good guy? _As in, you _went together?" _Bowser interrupted, a faint note of sad jealousy in his gravelly voice.

Ralph blinked. "Yeah, I guess so."

Clyde immediately brightened up, seizing on this opportunity for a silver lining. "Ralph, that's _great. _Few of us are lucky enough to stay on good terms with our protagonists, let alone actually develop real _friendships_ with them! That's an _encouraging_ step forward in tearing down the bad guy-good guy relationship barrier."

To Ralph's surprise, the group actually clapped for him. He rubbed one of his forearms, smiling faintly with embarrassment.

"Huh. I . . . guess I never thought of it that way."

"Sometimes, all we really need to do is step back and take a second look at our situations to realize that they're almost never as bad as we think they are. Bowser . . . next time you happen to run into Peach, why don't you try a simple, sincere apology for setting her on fire? You never know . . . people can surprise you." Ralph's ears perked up at the last words. Bowser nodded reluctantly in agreement, and Clyde turned his attention back to the group as a whole. "Now . . . building off of what Ralph and Bowser have already said . . . has anyone ever had a similar experience they feel like getting out in the open?"

The train of conversation continued, but Ralph barely heard it over Felix's voice, abruptly echoing in his head again . . . . _People can surprise you, Ralph._

_You've just got to keep looking._

"Just got to keep looking," he whispered to himself, so quietly that he went unheard by any of the other bad guys.

And then, at that particular moment, for some reason he wasn't really sure of at all . . . whether it was the relief of getting the DDR fiasco off his chest, or what Felix had said, or Clyde . . . whether it was the general atmosphere of hope and optimism suddenly seeming to materialize around and inside of him . . . or whether it was just plain, old, unmitigated coincidence . . . Ralph suddenly found himself looking up.

Ralph leaned back in his chair and turned his gaze skyward, the chatter in the room seeming to fade further and further into the background until he wasn't aware of it at all. Because the ceiling of the room - and of the small entirety of the Pac-world, for that matter - was itself the glass game screen, the view afforded by both Pac-man consoles was unlike almost any other in the entire arcade. Looking straight up, even in the deep, semi-darkness of swiftly fading summer twilight, Ralph could see one entire wing of the arcade, laid out above him like a living mural painted on the ceiling. From Mrs. Pac-man's position, two games down from Sugar Rush on the opposite side as the Whack-a-Mole, he had a near perfect view of practically his entire neighborhood - the dark, shadowy shapes of the consoles set around the softly glowing screens of Tapper's, Frogger, Rampage, Sugar Rush, Fix-It Felix Jr., and a handful of others . . . and, of course, the still-black screen of the locked-down Pac-man, now eagerly awaiting its morning restart. Everything in the arcade seemed so peaceful, so contented . . . and, to his slight surprise, Ralph realized that that was exactly how he was feeling himself.

_Don't give up. You've just got to keep looking._

"Don't give up," he murmured under his breath.

That was when it happened.

One minute, the space between Frogger and Rampage was dim and fuzzy, no different than any other corner of the arcade.

The next, it was lit up with a warm, glowing white light that switched on without any warning at all, gleaming in the semi-darkness so brightly and suddenly, Ralph blinked and jumped lightly in surprise, squinting curiously to get a better look at it.

After a few seconds, the brightness of the light calmed and diffused into a whitish-golden glow. Ralph's mouthed parted slowly in astonishment as he watched the entire outer shape of a tall, unfamiliar console become visible, the plastic white casing glowing transparently and the dim shadows of its inner circuits and wiring just visible. _It was the new game, _the one that Litwak had plugged in scarcely an hour before. As Ralph stared, the sign at the top of the console turned on and glowed like a constellation of colored stars in the dark arcade.

It wasn't like any console design Ralph had ever seen. The light-up sign was raised out from the console panel in the shape of an artist's palette, with a long brush and a ring of paint splotches glowing brightly in all colors of the rainbow that shifted and changed, undulating in waves of high definition hue. Beside the palette and brush was a single word - the title of the game - written in huge, looping cursive letters and shining in a bright, dazzling shade of blue outlined in white. . .

_Masterwork._

Ralph read the odd name several times, silently repeating it to himself.

_Masterwork. Masterwork? _He had never heard of it_._

Ralph trolled his gaze down the ceiling to look at the game's controls, and made a strange face, doing a slight double take. At first glance, there didn't appear to beany controls at _all. _There was no joystick, no guns or shooting controllers, not even any _buttons _to speak of. In fact, the only thing that Ralph could vaguely make out was what looked like some kind of removable wand, set into a long holding groove crosswise along the players' console. Above that, sitting perpendicular to the floor like a painting hung on a wall, was the enormous playing screen, the only feature of the game that had yet to light up . . . then, almost as if the game itself was responding to Ralph's train of thought, there was another quick flash of light, starting as a pinpoint in the middle of the screen and widening until it expanded out and filled the entire window. Ralph blinked and raised his head as high toward the Pac-ceiling as he could, peering at the new game screen in rapt fascination.

From what he could fuzzily determine, the game screen looked in on what appeared to be the interior of a single room, bright with daylight . . . and a rather small room, at that. Inside the room, which looked like it was built primarily of warm-colored wooden beams, like the interior of a cabin or some kind of hunting lodge, Ralph could just make out the shapes of some wooden furniture: a long work table along the back wall, a couple chairs here and there, a bureau or some other kind of chest, a big steamer trunk, a huge bookshelf filled to capacity with objects too small and distant to identify . . . and then, in the center of the room, sitting over a round Persian rug covering the floor, was . . . what was that, exactly? Ralph squinted as tightly as he could at the tall, triangular shape, his mind racing . . . and realized suddenly that it was an easel, an artist's easel with a large, rectangular canvas resting on it, facing away from the player's screen.

Ralph leaned back further in his folding chair, looking at the strange new game with a combination of curiosity, fascination, and skepticism. He couldn't for the life of him guess what kind of playing a game called _Masterwork _would involve. He took another close look at the room . . . which he guessed was supposed to be some kind of studio . . . but he couldn't make out any movement inside. As far as he could see, the game was empty. Maybe it was one of those character-less games where the players only interacted with objects, and followed some kind of disembodied, computer voice-instruction or something . . . .

Ralph was just about to shrug the game off as nothing more than some quirky, new-fangled novelty when a tiny, almost imperceptible flash of movement caught his eye. He did a double take and narrowed his gaze sharply at the easel in the middle of the room. He stared intensely for a few seconds, waiting . . . he was sure he'd seen something . . . _there! _Again, there was a definite motion on the screen, in the little space between the easel and the floor. Ralph peered interestedly for a few seconds more, then realized what he was looking at.

_They were feet._

Ralph stared at the new game screen, and time seemed to slow down as the little easel in the center of the room was gently pushed aside, and the game character who had been sitting . . . or rather, _hiding . . ._ behind it timidly got up from the spindly chair she had been crouched on and straightened to her full height, looking around the studio room as if she'd never seen it before.

Ralph couldn't tear his eyes away. His mouth was slowly opening, his jaw hanging in amazement as he watched the character cautiously approach the game screen. She reached one hand forward, tapped it once, then slowly laid both hands flat on the glass and peered out, her staring eyes wide with confusion and wonder.

Ralph gazed back. All of a sudden, he felt incredibly strange, as if his heart were beating vertically inside of him, trying to burrow down into his stomach one second, and jump into his throat the next. He was staring without blinking.

_He had never seen anyone so beautiful in his entire life_.

The girl with her hands against the glass leaned further forward, pressing her pixie nose and pink, puckered lips against it. If he squinted, Ralph could just make out a wash of freckles sprinkling her pale face. The caramel-brown hair that fell over her shoulders and down like a cape to the small of her back was so curly and unkempt that it nearly filled the entire screen as she leaned against it. In her big, blinking green eyes, Ralph saw a spark of something that sent an electric shiver down to his feet and made every muscle in his hands tense up at once. He practically felt like his code was glitching, and that a static ripple of ones and zeros might wash over him any second.

The girl in Masterwork took her hands off the glass and began moving around the room she was in, pausing to study every object and corner with unending fascination. She had a funny, lilting way of walking, as if both of her feet weren't quite straight, and twice she picked something up off the bookshelf only to drop it clumsily, wincing when it hit the floor and broke, then looking around nervously as if someone would appear to scold her for it. She was dressed in blue leggings and a gawky-looking white smock that nearly reached her small knees, folded bulkily up to her elbows and hanging off her petite body like a sheet. She was barefoot. She opened one of the windows in the back of the room and leaned halfway out of it, a stiff breeze blowing in and mussing her hair until it stood up like a bush.

Ralph completely forget that he was sitting in a Bad-Anon meeting. The minutes ticked by like seconds, and yet at the same time, the clock seemed to stand absolutely still. The next thing he knew, everyone around him was standing up from their chairs, and Clyde was clearing his throat loudly.

Ralph jumped, his mind rocketing back into the room like a meteor dropping to earth from the silent, floating sub-consciousness of space. He numbly went through the motions of the bad guy affirmation, holding hands with Dr. Robotnik and the tentacled-eyeball without even noticing them.

_"I'm bad, and that's good," _the group chanted mechanically. Ralph stayed silent, his eyes darting back up to the ceiling and searching the Masterwork screen. His heart sank almost dizzyingly when he saw that the girl was gone. _"I will never be good, and that's not bad." _Ralph glanced anxiously at the door, then back at the ceiling, his nerves tensing as he prepared to make his break ahead of the group. He had no idea why he was preparing to run. He had forgotten where he was going, where he was. All he could think of was _her. _All he knew was that he had to run _somewhere . . . _he had to do _something. _She had appeared before him like a shooting star, like a flash of clarity in a dark haze of listlessness, and he was left practically reeling, heart pounding and adrenaline pumping. He couldn't think clearly. He only knew one thing . . . he had to _go._

He had to go where she was.

_"There's no one I'd rather be than me."_

The second the last word of the mantra was spoken, before anyone had even lifted their heads, Ralph bolted.

He took off with such speed and excitement that he stumbled the first few steps on the slick linoleum floor, took out three chairs, and knocked Dr. Robotnik into the snack table as he exploded out of the circle and ran for the door.

"Ralph? Ralph, _where are you going?" _Clyde called after him in shock, hurriedly shooting into the hallway behind him. "Wait! I wanted to talk to you, Ralph!"

"Notimegottagocongratulations _seeyounextweek!" _Ralph shouted back over his shoulder in one breath as he sped around the corner at the end of the hall, pushing off the wall with his knuckles to pivot himself at the turn.

The drab walls of the Mrs. Pac-man maze sped past him in a blur. Without stopping, he bolted through the exit, took the stairs at a running jump, landing at the bottom with a solid, vibrating _bbbboom, _then grabbed the back end of the shuttle and pulled himself onto it like a vaulting horse. He fell into the seat, feet tapping rapidly on the floor and drumming his fingers impatiently on his knees. Finally - creaking slightly, as if struggling to recover from its six hundred and forty-three pound jolt - the shuttle lifted up and launched into the tunnel, the darkness sweeping over him.

Ralph sat there, heart hammering in his mouth and practically breathless, mentally urging the shuttle faster onward. He felt as if he had been caught up in a trance, his mind racing so feverishly it made him almost dizzy. Something had come over him that he had never experienced before, and he was powerless to resist it. He didn't even try. He only knew one thing, and it was pounding over and over in his brain like a hammer striking the nail of his single conscious need.

_Go where she is. Go where she is._

The shuttle neared the end of the tunnel, the circle of light growing rapidly closer. Ralph scrambled to the front of the shuttle and leapt off of it before it had even docked at the station, catching himself on all fours on the platform and taking off like a sprinter towards the Game Central Station portal.

_Go._

_Go where she is._

A/N: What's this, the _plot suddenly reappears?_

The love interest has arrived, and it only took me . . . 7 chapters and a prologue. Yeah, I officially cannot keep a story short.

Let me know what you think! Criticism is welcome. And to all you sweet peeps who are following and favoriting this, but haven't left a review yet? . . . . come on. Throw us a bone here, this is my Woodstock.

Peace.


	9. Chapter 8: Masterwork Madness

A/N: Happy Mayan Apocalypse, everyone! Why not celebrate the end of the world by reading and reviewing this chapter?

Oh, and also Merry Christmas, while we're at it. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 8: Masterwork Madness _

Things were relatively quiet in Game Central Station that evening. Maybe it was because everyone was exhausted from the hectic summer rush of gamers earlier that day . . . maybe it was because of the heat, which hung over the un-air-conditioned arcade in a heavy, invisible blanket of humidity, permeating through all cracks and crevices, even into the consoles and the game station power strip . . . or maybe it was just a plain old case of the Mondays. Whatever the reason, there were only a couple dozen characters milling calmly through the transit center at the moment when Ralph came barreling out of the Mrs. Pac-man portal, hit the slick, waxed floor of the station at top speed, slid twelve feet and crashed into a surge protector as he was questioning a team of basketball players from 3 on 3 Dunk Madness, knocking the entire group flat on the floor like a bowling ball taking out a cluster of pins.

Ralph shook his head, his eyes rolling dizzily for a few seconds as he disentangled himself from the heap of long-limbed athletes. He stumbled a few steps, swaying haphazardly from side to side before he could regain his balance. The basketball players, recovering slowly from the shock, groaned incredulously as they gingerly peeled themselves off the floor.

"What the_ bits, _man?" one of them demanded angrily. "You _crazy or somethin'?"_

Ralph barely heard him, holding his head with one hand to stop the world from spinning and taking off again before he could even run a straight line.

"Sorry fellas!" he tossed an apology absently over his shoulder, his mind still racing too frantically to think of anything other than his destination.

The surge protector, who had been buried at the bottom of the heap, finally sat up as the last basketball player climbed off of him. His head rolled on his shoulders in a daze for a few seconds before he straightened his glasses and spotted Ralph making his getaway.

"_You!" _he shouted, clenching his fists in stunned indignation. "You there! _Stop!"_

Ralph didn't even flinch. He kept running, anxiously pausing for a split second at each gate to scan the game titles as he passed them by.

Sugar Rush, Medieval Madness, Jolly Jogger, _Hero's Duty . . ._

_He could still see her in his mind's eye, pressing her small, thin hands against the glass . . . her eyes searching the darkness, lit with a child-like combination of fascination and fear . . . he could still hear the deafening throb of his own heartbeat, feel the strange force compelling him irresistibly forward._

Pac-man, Mega-Zone, Tapper's, _Frogger . . . _

_Go where she is . . . go where she is . . ._

_Masterwork._

Ralph skidded to a sliding halt, nearly running past the right gate as the game title flashed in the corner of his eye. He clumsily back-tracked, then hunched over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath, staring first up at the scrolling title screen, then slowly lowering his gaze to peer into the dim, empty portal leading into the mysterious new game. For a few seconds, everything was quiet and still. The gate sat there silently in front of him, patient, unassuming . . . as if waiting for him, beckoning him forward.

Ralph straightened up, shaking out his arms to steady his nerves. He took a few more slow, deep breaths, fighting to regain his composure. He closed his eyes, gave one long, final exhale, looked up, and began walking calmly toward the gate, his heart still hammering wildly . . . if possible, even _harder _with every step that he took. He still hadn't stopped once to think about what he was doing . . . he was running on pure instinct, obeying only the unstoppable, inexplicable urge that had swept over him like mind control the instant he had seen her face looking out into the darkness.

He was one step away from entering the Masterwork portal when out of nowhere, no less than _five _surge protectors materialized in a flare of blue static, standing in a half circle between him and the game entrance. The balding, bespectacled SP whom Ralph had now knocked over twice in the last twenty-four hours stepped forward, his face set in a firm, scathing glare of authority. He pulled a small object from his utility belt . . . reached out, jammed the two-pronged end of the instrument into Ralph's chest . . . and pressed the button.

_BBBZZZZZBBBZZT._

Ralph stopped dead in his tracks, convulsing as the hand-held taser sent waves of blue electricity coursing over his entire body. The SP held Ralph suspended in the shock for five full seconds, then pulled back, a quiet, satisfied smirk on his face. Ralph swayed on his feet for a split second, then spun slowly on one foot and collapsed to his back on the floor like a tree timbering, his eyes rolling in his head and the ends of his hair and clothes smoking faintly. Three SPs wearing identical glasses and smug grins leaned over him, rotating around each other like ends of a pinwheel. Ralph narrowed his eyes, his mouth hanging open and his tongue lolling slightly in his mouth.

"Jr. Fix-It Felix, ooon my whay too Ralph-it Wreck, officer," he slurred from the floor, holding up one limp finger.

The surge protector's smirk widened. He held his hand out over Ralph's face and lifted three fingers. "Just doing my job, _sir. _Looks like your days of gate-jumping are _over. _Now tell me,how many fingers do you see?"

Ralph crossed his eyes. "Down . . . triangle . . . square?"

"Close enough," the SP snapped his fingers. "Get him on his feet, boys."

It took the other four surge protectors almost five minutes of puffing, groaning effort to hoist Ralph off the floor and push him, still dazed and swaying, to his feet, two of them on each side with one of his arms draped over their shoulders, struggling not to buckle under the weight. The bespectacled SP nodded briskly in approval, then flipped a few pages on his clipboard, scanning for the right game.

"Let's see . . . _Magic Sword, Mario Bros . . . . _ah, here it is, _Masterwork. _Ahh, pah pah . . .I'm sorry sir, but it seems this game has been plugged in for less than forty-eight hours, meaning it has not had adequate time to calibrate. I'm afraid that all traffic in and out of the game is forcibly suspended until said requisite amount of time has elapsed . . . we don't want to risk disrupting any _code configuration, _now, do we? Why don't you try again on _Wednesday, _sir . . . . _if _you can keep your nose clean until then, that is," the surge protector peered distastefully over his glasses at Ralph, who was still half-groggy from being tased.

"Wha . . . _Wednesday?" _he mumbled, his eyelids flitting heavily and out of sync with one another.

"That's right. _If _you can keep out of trouble," he turned to the other surge protectors, who were still helping Ralph to stand and struggling to stay on their feet. "Please assist this . . . . . _gentleman,_ to a nearby courtesy bench. Have a nice _day, _sir."

Slowly, the SPs inched Ralph over to the resting area in the center of the station. They gradually stood him up straight, leaned him back further and further, and then heaved a huge, collective gasp of relief as they dropped him heavily onto one of the benches and beat a hasty retreat back to their respective gates, each groaning and massaging their rotator cuffs.

For a few minutes longer, Ralph just sat there in dazed silence, sprawled limply over the bench with his head lolling on one shoulder. Finally, as the lingering haziness in his head faded and was replaced with a mild, sobering ache, he blinked a few times and sat up straight, rubbing the side of his head and wincing. His bearings all came back to him at once in a dull jolt, and as he looked back up at the still innocently scrolling Masterwork sign, his felt his insides give a sudden lurch of mortification as he realized how close he'd come to actually barging headlong into the game with absolutely _no clue _what he was going to say or do when he got there. For a full minute, he simply sat there and gaped at the game entrance in retrospective shock - actually feeling, for once in his life, exceedingly _grateful _for having been harassed by the SPs.

What was he thinking? What in the _world _was he _thinking? _Ralph shook himself on the bench, holding his forehead with his hand and staring down at his feet, racking his brains for some explanation of what he'd been about to do. He felt as if he'd just woken up abruptly from sleepwalking. _What _on _earth _had come over him? One minute, he'd been sitting in his Bad-Anon meeting, just like any other week . . . and the next, he was tearing around like a _lunatic_, ready to go charging into a completely unknown game, all because of some . . .

Ralph stopped, his incredulous train of thought grinding to a halt.

_All because of . . . . her._

_Her . . . . the girl he'd seen in Masterwork._

Ralph slouched back in disbelief on the bench, staring unseeingly off into space and ignoring the sideways glances of other characters as they passed him by.

Something . . . something he couldn't explain had happened to him when he saw that girl. Something that, as he looked back on it now, was bizarre . . . and _foolish . . . _beyond all reasoning. He didn't know one _single _thing about this person. He didn't even know her _name. _He closed his eyes and brought back the image of her in his head . . . her hands, her face, those eyes . . . looking out at him, but not seeing him . . . looking, but not understanding . . .

He opened his eyes again. It simply didn't make sense. There was absolutely no reason for him to have reacted the way he did, to _feel _the way he felt when he saw her in his mind's eye . . . and yet, _there it was, _every bit as real and undeniable as the first time. Just sitting there on the bench, his heart began to race again the moment he so much as thought about her. The same part of him that had gone berserk and compelled him to go barreling into her game - without so much as an introduction - flared up again, seething and flickering like a starved flame, urging him once more to simply _go, _just get up and run straight to wherever she was . . . but this time, the voice was stamped out and quieted by the rest of him, by every conscious inclination toward common sense that assured him how utterly _ridiculous _he was being_._

And anyway . . . it didn't matter, now. Ralph's nemesis surge protector was standing right there outside the Masterwork gate, his arms folded authoritatively and his gaze trolling back and forth across the station, on the lookout for any characters who so much as glanced at the entrance to the new game. The title screen above the portal was now displaying the words, _"Game closed while calibrating . . . . game closed while calibrating . . . " _over and over in glowing red letters.

Ralph sat up straighter, letting his shoulders hang wearily as he breathed a long, tired sigh of perplexity. Even if he still wanted to, he couldn't go charging into the game _now_ . . . and yet . . . even as he sat there, half of him silently thanking his lucky stars that the SPs had stopped him from making potentially the biggest mistake of his life . . . the other half of him was actively contemplating ways that he might sneak past the surge protector and make it into Masterwork before Wednesday. It was _maddening._

Finally unable to stand it anymore, Ralph groaned out loud, rubbing his face with his hands and getting up from the bench. He still felt strange and slightly woozy from the electric shock, but it didn't matter . . . he _had _to get away from the Masterwork game, before he lost control again and did something stupid.

He walked slowly through the station, gaze fixed to the floor. A hundred confused thoughts were running through his mind, but they all inevitably boiled down to the same question, continually repeating itself . . . why? Why? _Why?_

_What __**was it **__about her? Why had seeing her made him feel like this?_

He searched his brain over and over for an answer, _any _answer, but it was useless. The more he tried to erase her picture from his head, the more indelibly she impressed herself, until he practically couldn't see the station floor in front of him around her wide, staring green eyes.

Suddenly, breaking him mercifully from his transfixion, Ralph caught a familiar breath of sweet-smelling air and looked up to find that his feet had unconsciously carried him straight back to the Sugar Rush gate.

_"_Van_ellope!" _his shoulders slumped with a huge exhale of relief, setting off immediately for the portal. His resolution to visit her and apologize for the previous night came rushing back in one grateful instant, along with a new hopeful revelation . . . if anyone could talk some sense into him, _she _could. He would tell her all about Masterwork and the girl at the easel, and she would tell him that he was nuts, he was _crazy_ . . . that _nothing _special had happened, he'd finally just snapped from the stress of this whole stupid romance fixation, and if he would just settle down and _get a grip _for a moment, he'd forget all about her.

_He'd forget all about her . . ._

Ralph narrowed his brow and set his jaw firmly as he fazed through the Sugar Rush portal, his shadow surge protector too busy watch-dogging the Masterwork entrance to even notice.

_Yes . . . if anyone could bring him crashing back down to blunt reality, it would be Vanellope._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Twenty-five sticky-footed, panting minutes later, holding his hands on his hips to catch his breath after booking it all the way to the Candy Castle and pounding impatiently with one fist at the front entrance . . . Ralph stifled a small groan when he looked down and saw that it was Sour Bill who opened the door. The green, dour-faced little candy manservant jumped in surprise for a split second, then glared disapprovingly up at Ralph. Even now, more than a full year after the unpleasant licking altercation, the taciturn hard candy still hadn't quite forgiven him.

"Oh . . . it's _you. _What do _you _want?" Bill muttered in his slow, irritated monotone.

Ralph slumped exasperatedly, his brow lowering into a straight line. "Gee, I don't know. What do you _think _I want?"

Sour Bill sighed and rolled his eyes, pushing the door open wider so that Ralph could just barely squeeze through. "Madam President is in her chambers. Shall I _escort you, _or do you think you can _find it yourself?" _he droned sarcastically.

"Ha, _ha_," Ralph grumbled in reply, shooting the candy attendant an unappreciative glower over his shoulder as he made his familiar way toward the enormous spiral staircase at the other end of the castle foyer. "You get funnier every time I see you, _sunshine."_

Sour Bill rolled his eyes again and waddled away, muttering under his breath.

Ralph had followed the same path up the stairs and through the maze of pink hallways leading to Vanellope's royal bedroom . . . or, as she called it, the _presidential suite . . . _so many times, he didn't even have to glance up as he rounded corners, his feet carrying him to her bedroom door of their own accord. One second he was staring at the floor, biting him bottom lip introspectively as he worried about how best to apologize to Vanellope for ditching her in DDR, explain to her . . . _whatever it was _that had happened with the girl in Masterwork, and sheepishly ask for her advice, all in one go . . . and the next second, he looked up and was there, standing outside her room, the lavishly adorned lintel of her pink door barely reaching up to his chin. There was a wrinkled paper sign tacked to the door, written with a green crayon in what he immediately recognized as Vanellope's childish, scrawling letters, which read, _"No disturbances, unless it's an emergency, you incompetent, candy-brained dimwits" . . . _and beneath that, written in orange crayon, was a second paper that read,_ "Seriously, I MEAN IT."_

Ralph blinked twice at the signs, sighed, took a deep breath, and knocked softly on the door three times.

He waited a moment. No sound or movement came from within.

He knocked again.

Nothing.

He raised his hand to knock a third time, but he had just barely tapped the door once when Vanellope's shrill voice suddenly came shrieking from inside, making him flinch and hastily pull his fist back.

"ALRIGHT, COME _IN_ ALREADY! _Can't you people READ? Sheesh!"_

Slowly, Ralph turned the small jawbreaker knob with two fingers and pushed the door open halfway, ducking down to stick his head through and peek inside.

The enormous, brightly lit pink and white master bedroom, complete with a huge balcony that overlooked the vast chocolate mountain range surrounding the candy citadel, was strewn everywhere with what looked like half the contents of the castle . . . clothes, toys, furniture, candy wrappers, miscellaneous garbage, and most of all, candy tools and go-kart parts.

Ralph squeezed through the small doorway, closing it noiselessly behind him and tip-toeing through the scattered maze of Vanellope's various possessions. He paused in the center of the wide bedroom suite, looking around for some sign of his friend . . . he turned, and his jaw dropped in surprise when he saw the _Wreck-It Mobile, _parked right there on one side of the room, a slew of pink chaise lounges, end tables and floor lamps shoved aside to make room for it. It was propped up on four sugar cube cinder blocks, the peppermint wheels scattered around on the floor, and from underneath it Ralph could hear the _clink _and _clank _of tools on candy gears, as well as a soft, continual stream of irritated muttering. He silently picked his way around the clutter and moved beside the kart, dropping to one knee and leaning over to listen.

"Dang, rotten,_ no good,_ gumball_ sucking crybabies, _can't give me one _single solitary day _to myself . . . should just pack up and move to the _cave, permanently . . . _gonna blow a _fuse _if I have to listen to _one, more, whimpering, whining, candy-coated . . . . _"

Without speaking, Ralph reached underneath the Wreck-It Mobile, grabbed hold of what turned out to be Vanellope's foot, and pulled her out from under the kart. She slid out more quickly than he anticipated, due to the fact that she was lying on a peanut brittle creeper. She yelped loudly, her eyes wide and blinking with surprise as she was yanked into the light, a candy wrench still gripped in her hand and poised in midair.

". . . . RALPH?" she cried, finishing her sentence with a startled squeak. For a split second, they looked at each other in stunned silence, Ralph leaning over her and Vanellope flat on her back, blinking in surprise, her limbs up in the air like an overturned turtle. Ralph squinted one eye at her, unable to keep down a confused smile that tugged at one corner of his mouth.

"Kid . . . why is the -"

But he didn't have time finish the thought before Vanellope had thrown down the candy wrench, scrambled to her feet and launched herself straight up in the air, clamping her arms around Ralph's neck and hanging there like a necklace. Ralph reared back in surprise, straightening up and hovering his hands uncertainly around her, not sure whether to pull her off of him or hold her closer.

"_Ralph!" _she cried again, intentionally this time, with a heavy tone of worry hoarsening her voice. She squeezed him once more, a little bit _too _tightly, then leaned back to look him in the face, clinging to the neck of his shirt with her feet flat on his chest.

"Are you _okay?" _she demanded, looking him all over as if checking for injuries. "Ralph, I'm . . . I'm _so sorry _for what happened last night, I didn't . . . I _never _would have, if I'd known . . . and after, I was so _worried, _I _wanted _to go after you, but Felix said . . . and then, when you didn't even _wait _for me, you _. . . " _Vanellope stopped suddenly in mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open and an abrupt change coming over her countenance as the thought visibly occurred to her. Ralph cringed slightly, bracing for the coming eruption as he watched her expression shift rapidly, from worried, to relieved, to _angry._

" . . . you . . . you, rotten, _stinking, creep!" _she snarled, the anger slowly dawning on her in mounting increments until she leaned back and punctuated her final word with a punch to his cheek ( which hurt about as much as being hit by a ping pong ball, but nevertheless got the point across ). Ralph blinked in shock, twitching the left half of his face. "You didn't even _wait _for me, didn't say one word! Look, I understand it was the heat of the _moment _and all, but you could have at _least _given me a _look _before you ran off, just so I knew you'd be al_right!_ I was worried sick! And _today! . . . _do you have any, _any idea _how _awful _I've felt all day, thinking about it? I practically had _remorse _nausea!"

As Vanellope was ranting, waving her short arms around in her head in wild gesticulations, Ralph gingerly grabbed her around the middle with both hands and held her at half-arm's length, so that she at least wasn't able to hit him in the face again.

" . . . and _now, _you just _show up, _unannounced, and everything's magically all _hunky dory again? _Uuuuaaauu_rggh!" _Vanellope growled, tossing her hands once more over her head and then going limp, breathing heavily and glaring with frustration.

Ralph, who had been gradually leaning further away from her, relaxed his grimace and turned back to look her square in the eye.

"Uuumm . . . . . . ?" he searched for the right words for a few seconds, then gave up and shrugged helplessly. Vanellope lowered her eyelids and folded her arms, slouching forward to lean on the rim of his interlocked hands and drumming her fingers on his thumb in irritation. Ralph gave her a weak, sheepish smile.

"Would it help if I told you that I came here to apologize?"

Vanellope looked at him in silence for a moment . . . then heaved a huge sigh, her countenance pulling another abrupt one-eighty as she reverted back to a sympathetic, wide-eyed look of concern.

"Oh . . . . _Ralph, _you big _moron. _I'm not mad. I was never _mad. _I just . . . I was _really worried _about you, okay?" she muttered, her voice trailing off shyly. "Are you . . . _sure _you're alright?"

Ralph stammered hesitantly for a second, then realized how long he'd been holding her in both hands like a coffee mug and quickly set her down on the floor, wiping his hands on his overalls and trying to look casual.

"What, you . . . you mean the _stage thing? Pppsssshh . . . _oh, yeah, I'm over that. _Way _over it. Seriously, are you joking?"

Vanellope gave him a blatantly unconvinced stare. "Rrright. Well. Anyway . . . listen, Ralph, about . . . about last night . . . I just . . . well, I just wanted to tell you I'm _sorry, _ok?"

Ralph's expression instantly softened in surprise, and he leaned back down closer to her.

"What are you talking about?" he asked hollowly.

Vanellope twisted a lock of hair anxiously around her fingers and looked down at her shoes. "I mean . . . _I'm _the one who made you go to the party, Ralph. _I _was the one who insisted on making you talk to all those women, and . . . and I'm the one who egged you into dancing on the stage. I pushed you into it, _all _of it," she lowered her gaze further and further, her voice growing continually softer until she was muttering barely audibly into the neck of her sweatshirt. _"It was all my fault, _and I . . . I shouldn't have . . . _" _she trailed off, averting her gaze.

Ralph looked down at her, a pang of guilt wrenching his heart. He closed his mouth into a firm line and reached down, lifting Vanellope's chin with his finger and forcing her to look up at him. Her eyes were wide and almost glistening.

"Hey, _hey," _he said gently, cupping one hand behind her and pulling her closer, until her hands rested on his knee. She sniffed once, trying to hide it with her sleeve. "Hey. Look at me. I don't want to hear you saying anything like that again, ok? You didn't do _anything _wrong_, _kid. I mean, _heck, _you . . . you were trying to help me. It's not your fault I can't keep these _ballistics_ under control," he balled one hand into a fist and nudged her lightly with his knuckles, coaxing a small, reluctant smile out of her as she tried to fend him off.

"Hmph . . . ha, yeah," she admitted, sniffing once more and tilting her head to the side. She chuckled thoughtfully as she balled her small hand into a fist and pressed all of her knuckles against one of his. "You _did _go a little medieval on that game, didn't you?"

"A _little?" _Ralph spread his hands wide and puffed out his chest in mock boasting, making Vanellope giggle louder. "Medieval nothing . . . I went _primeval _on that yuppie, fancy-prance excuse for a game_. _They were just lucky Felix happened to be there, because otherwise they'd _still _be out of commission, that . . . glass chair-makin', prissy pop-washed bunch of twinkle-toed-"

"Alright, al_right," _Vanellope cut him off, her giggle ceasing abruptly. "Don't overdo it."

Ralph paused, glanced at his outstretched arms, and quickly pulled them back to his sides, clearing his throat sheepishly. "You, ah . . . get the idea, anyway."

Vanellope gave him a smug smile, rolling her eyes and turning back to the Wreck-It Mobile. She moved around propping the peppermint wheels up and rolling them back into place over the axels, groaning with effort and muttering as she went. "Yeah, well . . . all I know is, I am never, _ever, _giving _anyone_ romantic advice _again. _No-siree-bob, my Cupid days are _over."_

Ralph froze. The image of the Masterwork girl instantly reappeared, plummeting back down from space and blasting his mind's eye like a scud missile of living color. A thick, dry knot formed almost instantaneously in the back of his throat, and he swallowed it with an audible _gulp._

When he didn't respond, Vanellope glanced back at him, quizzically studying his taut expression.

"What?" she asked. "What is it?"

Ralph laced his fingers apprehensively, looking down at his toes. When he spoke, his voice was dry and awkwardly high pitched.

"Wwwwwee_eeeelll . . . . _aaahhh . . . "

Vanellope stood up and shrugged at him. "_What?_"

" . . . well . . . you see, that's . . . actually _part of _the reason I'm heeeere . . . I was hoping you could maybe, sort of . . . kind of . . . that is . . . "

"Sweet mother of _monkey milk_, Ralph, _spit it out already!"_

Ralph heaved a huge sigh and squeezed his eyes shut. "I was hoping you could . . . _gurvmeesmrrmanticurdvusss."_

Vanellope blinked, her mouth hanging open slightly. "Huh?"

"You know, _give . . . mesomerrmanticadvurse," _Ralph repeated, muttering through clenched teeth.

"Give who da _what now?"_

"Aaauuu_uuggh!" _Ralph groaned, tossing his hands in the air and giving up, turning to face her straight on. "Kid, I _need you to give me some romantic advice, _ok?"

Vanellope let the peppermint wheel she was holding up drop back to its side. She slumped her shoulders forward in disbelief, narrowing one eye weirdly at Ralph's face as if trying read something written on his forehead. After a few seconds, she moaned and smacked one palm on her forehead.

"Awww, I know that _look. Ralph . . . _what did you _do?"_

"What? Nothing, nothing! . . . . I mean . . . _yet_," he added quietly. "It's not something I _did, _so much as . . . . something I think I need you to talk me _out of _doing_._"

Vanellope gaped speechlessly at his face a moment longer, searching it . . . then, like a spark of static electricity shooting invisibly from his eyes to hers, she suddenly blinked with a stunned, dawning look of comprehension . . . which lasted only a few seconds before flattening back into a deadpan stare.

"What's her name, Ralph," she said blankly, without the faintest intonation of a question.

Ralph twitched in surprise, then looked quickly away, shuffling his feet with embarrassment.

"I . . . don't really know."

Vanellope blinked, but continued to stare unfazed.

"Uh-huh. Where is she from?"

" . . . Masterwork?" Ralph squeaked, wondering how a little girl who barely stood above his knees suddenly seemed to be towering over him.

Vanellope quirked one eyebrow. "What's a _Masterwork?"_

"It's the new game Litwak just plugged in today . . . its right across the aisle from here, haven't you _seen it yet?"_

"Uh, _no . . . _I took myself off of the _race roster today!" _Vanellope snapped, gesturing with both arms to the Wreck-It Mobile. "I spent the whole day _here, _trying to think of a way to _apologize _to a certain somebody who I _assumed _would still be sulking in his pile of bricks about now!"

Ralph opened his mouth to snap back, then stopped. "You . . . were doing what?"

Vanellope sighed, rubbing her face with her hand. "Turns out, I didn't make the _struts _on your kart strong enough, okay? Guess I underestimated how much pressure your big butt would _put on them. _I brought your kart up here to fix it in private, and then I was going to _surprise you _to try and cheer you up._"_

In spite of the Masterwork girl's face - and all that it entailed - still hanging like a threat in his mind's eye, Ralph gave a small smile, his insides warming for a moment of blissful distraction. He looked around the room, then back at the single tiny door leading out of the suite, then back to Vanellope.

"How the heck did you _get it_ up here, anyway?"

"Don't change the subject!_" _Vanellope retorted sharply, leaping up onto the tailfin of the orange candy-kart and pointing one finger straight between Ralph's eyes. "You want my advice? You're gonna have to tell me _what happened, _first. So spill, Chuckles."

Ralph swallowed again, his mouth cotton dry. He hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck as he searched for a way to explain what had happened, when he didn't really have a clue what had happened himself. Vanellope folded her arms impatiently.

_"Well?"_

"It's . . . it's a little hard to _explain."_

Vanellope groaned frustratedly, climbing down from the tailfin. She muttered under her breath and shook her head as she grabbed a candy-cane torque wrench from under the Wreck-It Mobile and began circling the kart, fiercely tightening the wheels back into place on their axels. Ralph watched her, both curious and confused.

When she reached the third wheel, the fourth still lying on its side near the right front fender, Vanellope jerked her head up at him and ordered shortly, "Well don't just _stand _there, Useless, get the last one!"

"Oh . . . er, right, sorry," Ralph muttered uncertainly, picking up the fourth wheel with one hand and positioning it over the axel. Still grumbling, Vanellope leaned around his fingers and screwed the peppermint bolts back in one by one, then tossed the wrench over her shoulder and dusted her hands off. She looked expectantly up at Ralph, planting her hands on her hips and tapping one foot on the floor.

Ralph returned her gaze blankly for a second, then shrugged. "_What?"_

"What do you think, _what? _Get in the _kart, _dum-dum! I haven't got all night!"

Ralph raised his eyebrows skeptically, but obediently clambered into the newly-repaired kart, grunting slightly as he positioned himself in the cab. The second he lifted both feet off the floor and settled his weight into the driver's seat, the four sugar cubes propped underneath the kart trembled, split with cracks, then crumbled into pieces. The kart dropped to the floor with a puff of powdered sugar and a blunt, unceremonious _kkrunch, _the candy axels creaking briefly in protest.

Vanellope nodded once, then hopped into the cab and sat down cross-legged in the space between Ralph's feet, which she'd designed to be large enough particularly for that purpose. Ralph pulled his knees apart to look down at her.

"Uuuuh . . . now what?" he posited blankly.

"Geez, do I have to spell it out? You're taking me to see this _Masterwack _character!"

Ralph's jaw dropped. "It's . . . it's Master_work, _first of all -"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever . . . "

"-and _second _of all, we can't _go there _yet. The game is still calibrating, there's no traffic _in _or _out _until Wednesday night."

"I didn't say we were going _into _the game, Stinkbrain, I said you were taking me to _see _it! We're going to use the game-screen hover-cams at the Royal Raceway. I want to get a good look at whatever it is that's got you so du - well . . . _more _dumbfounded than _usual. _You can explain what happened on the way, if you think you can _manage _it_."_

Ralph narrowed his eyes at the top of her head. "Listen, _kid, _I didn't come here to -"

"You want my advice, or _not_?" Vanellope interrupted, crossing her arms finitely.

Ralph sat there, glowering speechlessly for a moment . . . then growled loudly in defeat and slammed both hands down on either side of the kart, propelling it grumpily out of the sugar cube rubble and into the center of the suite, knocking aside multiple pieces of furniture as he went. He poked Vanellope in the back of the head with his fingertip, making her jump and whirl around to scowl at him.

"Well, where to _now, _your Majesty?" he grumbled sarcastically, gesturing around the room.

Vanellope stuck out her bottom lip defiantly. "Out onto the balcony," she muttered, jerking her thumb toward the large French doors propped open onto the spacious overhang.

Ralph swallowed a murmur of objection, rolling his eyes as he wheeled them out onto the balcony. He squinted as they rolled into the full sunlight, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the blazing pink glare. When they did, he was surprised to see that a large section of the pillared, white chocolate railing surrounding the perimeter of the balcony had been removed.

"What the . . . ?"

He slowly, cautiously rolled the kart forward until the tip of the front fender just peeked over the edge. Stretching his neck out, Ralph felt a familiar pit balling up in his stomach. He looked down at Vanellope with a slack-jawed, incredulous stare. She simply smiled up at him in return.

"Like it? Just had it built this morning."

Ralph shook his head slowly from side to side, lifting his gaze back up to the narrow, sugar-spackled strip of candy ribbon go-kart track that descended from the edge of the balcony in a steep, downhill plunge.

"No, Vanellope. _No."_

"Ah, _come on, _you big chicken! It was the fastest way to get your kart up to my room . . . and now, it's the only way for us to get _down."_

Ralph lowered his brow stubbornly, clamping his hands down on the balcony on either side of the kart so hard he cracked the white chocolate finish and dug his fingers in. He shook his head firmly again.

"I said _no, _kid, and this time I _mean it. _We'll get out and _walk _to the raceway. I don't care if my kart has to stay up here for keeps_ . . ._there is no _way _I'm going down _that thing_."

"Oh . . . _isn't _there?" a devilish grin suddenly spread across Vanellope's face, her eyes shining with a devious glint. She slowly got to her feet, lifting her hands and wriggling her fingers toward Ralph.

His eyes widened with panic as he realized what she was about to do, and he leaned back from her as far as possible in the seat while still keeping his hands gripped firmly on the balcony.

"_Oh, _no . . . no, Vanellope, _no,_ I am _not kidding! _Young lady, don't you even _think _about . . . . no, _NO!"_

But there was nothing he could do. Vanellope let out a shrill, vicious cackle and sprung up at Ralph like a Jack-in-the-box, launching herself onto his torso and attacking his sides with her tiny fingers, tickling mercilessly. Ralph immediately contorted in frantic spasms, laughing uncontrollably and convulsing left and right as he fought to shake Vanellope off of him without losing his hold on the balcony. She easily evaded him, slipping around to his back and hanging from his one overall strap while she tickled his neck and giggled maliciously.

"Va_hahaha, ah haa! . . . ha, _no, Vane-he-he-heh, he ha _haaaa!" _he gasped for breath, struggling to talk between fits of laughter, but it was no use. Every time he jerked back and forth to try and escape her, his grip loosened and the kart creaked dangerously closer and closer toward the edge of the downward plunge. "Va . . . Vane-he-hellope . . . kid, _stop!"_

"What's that? I can't hear you over all the _fun we're having!"_

She waited until he tossed his head to one side to try and trap her fingers against his shoulder, then darted around into his lap and hit him with all ten fingers, smack in the center of his belly . . . and finally, it was too much. With one last desperate, snorting howl of laughter, Ralph wrenched his hands out of the balcony floor and threw both arms around in front of him, pinning Vanellope to his chest and arresting her every move . . . providing the final push needed to tip the nose of the go-kart over the edge of the balcony, the winding length of the sparkling track suddenly yawning down before them. For a few precious seconds, the kart teetered on the edge, Ralph staring helplessly over the descent. Vanellope squirmed around in his arms until she was facing forward, grinning eagerly and peeking over his arm as the front two wheels of the kart _thunked _softly over the lip of the balcony.

"Heeeere, weeee_eeeee, ggooooOOOOOOOOOO!" _

Vanellope's excited muttering lengthened into a shrill, piercing cry of delight and mingled with Ralph's terrified yell as the kart finally tilted over the edge and the two of them pitched headfirst down the steep hill, rapidly gaining momentum until the wind was whipping the ends of Vanellope's ponytail straight back into Ralph's face and their eyes were watering at the corners.

The kart zoomed down for one suspended moment in what felt almost like freefall, spiraled down three times in a sharply banked corkscrew, then veered left, careened up a shallow incline, and rocketed back down at breakneck speed toward the castle's outer wall, where Ralph saw that another makeshift entrance had been made by knocking out one of the enormous stained-glass windows, the track continuing straight through the opening.

The kart zoomed down the final hill, through the hole in the castle wall, flew off the end of the track, and landed with a deafening _KKKZZZRROOM! _at the top of one of the wide, spiral staircases. The kart frame creaked and buckled, but miraculously didn't give way as they raced on, bumping and bucking all the way down the staircase. They didn't even slow down as they zoomed into the castle foyer and raced toward the main entrance. Vanellope, who had been squeezed like a vice in Ralph's arms since the second they'd tilted onto the track, wriggled her arms free and held them straight up in the air.

"_Woooooh!" _she cried, giggling furiously as they sped into the final stretch.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Far away at the end of the long foyer, unaware of the approaching mayhem, Sour Bill was perched at the highest step of a folding candy-cane ladder beside the closed front doors of the castle. He was holding a rag and a spray bottle, alternately squirting water on the round, brightly colored lollipop windows set into the door, then wiping them until they squeaked spotlessly. He was narrowing his eyes in a dark glower at the last persistent speck on the highest window when suddenly, he heard the faint, but unmistakable cackle of his sovereign, seeming to grow louder and louder by the second, as if she was . . .

Carefully, with a very bad feeling growing at the pit of his candy core, Sour Bill turned around on the top of the ladder and froze, his eyes widening and his mouth drooping into a paralyzed frown when he saw the _kart . . . _the oversized orange candy-kart that had already caused him an undue amount of grief that day . . . rocketing straight towards him, along with both Wreck-It Ralph and President Vanellope, the two of them both screaming, but wearing quite opposite expressions.

Sour Bill quietly dropped the squirt bottle.

_KKCCRRAAHHASSCHH!_

He closed his eyes the second before the kart came crashing straight through the front doors of the palace, ripping them off their hinges and bursting them into candy splinters. For a moment, everything was silent as he felt himself sailing through the air . . . then landing with a sharp _PLINK _on the floor, bouncing three times, and finally swiveling to a stop, spinning around on his head like a top as bits of door, window, and candy-ladder rained down around him. The rag landed on top of him, slapping him in the face.

From far, far away, he heard the oafish voice of the Fix-It Felix bad guy, calling out behind him,

"_Sooooooooorrrrryyy!"_

There was a final squeal of wheels spinning at the end of the castle drive . . . and then, silence. Slowly, Sour Bill peeled the rag off of his face, rolled to his feet, and stood up, blinking in a shell-shocked daze. He looked around at the pieces of the front door, then back behind him at the staircase, which was now piped with two matching lines of tire tread . . . then back at the jagged, crumbling hole where the front entrance used to be.

Sour Bill narrowed his eyes, picked up the squirt bottle without looking at it, glared in the direction the kart had gone, and hissed a single phrase under his breath.

"_I don't like you, Wreck-It Ralph."_

Then he turned on his heel, waddled away, found the last intact piece of window that he had been about to wash, and squirted it.

A/N: Ha. You're a good man, Sour Bill.


	10. Chapter 9: It's All So Brand New

A/N; Not a crazy-long chapter, I'm afraid, but just a little something to ease me back out of the holiday stupor. Hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I own none of copyrighted concepts or characters mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 9: It's All So Brand New_

The sun outside was just beginning to set, sending long, lazy beams of tangerine glow through the windows of Litwak's office. He was sitting at his desk, absently clicking through the list of emails in his inbox, half of which appeared to be spam. He shook his head wearily at the screen as he passed over yet another subject line written obnoxiously in blaring, all-capital letters, this one advertising a shady-sounding virus protection website. Litwak closed the email window, _hmph_ing in disgust and spinning away from the computer in his swivel-chair.

_Blasted, newfangled machines . . . everything was virus this, update that, RAM and ROM and Lord knew what else . . . these finicky new computers were for the birds. He'd trade in every last one of them to have his good old, sturdy ZX Spectrum back . . . _

But before he could slip any further into his nostalgic musings, there was a prompt knock at the back door to Litwak's office, a knock which he'd been waiting almost an hour for. Litwak checked his watch, shaking his head and muttering under his breath as he got up. He opened the door, which led out the back of the building into the small parking lot.

"Well, hello there!" he mustered good-naturedly at the disinterested-looking delivery man. "'Bout time you boys got here, I've been waiting since - "

"Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on," the man - or boy, rather, seeing as he looked almost young enough to be Litwak's grandson - muttered rudely as he scanned the pages of the clipboard he was holding. "I've got here one game console for delivery to a Litwak's Arcade," he looked up for the first time, popping his gum once as he looked the older man blankly in the eye. "This the place?"

Litwak gave him a sarcastic blink. "Last time I checked the big _sign _out front, junior."

"Yeah, yeah. Sign here."

Litwak accepted the clipboard and pulled a ballpoint pen from the breast pocket of his black-and-white-striped referee's jersey. He glanced quickly through the delivery form, nodded with approval, then scrawled his signature at the bottom.

"Right," the delivery-boy muttered, sniffing loudly as he chomped continually on his wad of gum. "Where you want it, dude?"

"Out front, please. I'll meet you there. Oh, and please, _please,_ be careful trucking it in. There's a nasty crack in the pavement right outside the main entrance, and just last week some - "

His bored gaze trained down at the clipboard again, the young man turned his back to Litwak and walked away in the middle of his sentence, trudging back to the delivery truck and motioning to the other man sitting in the passenger seat of the cab. Litwak made a face, putting his hands on his hips as he watched them in disbelief.

"Huh. _Kids _these days," he grumbled to himself. He closed the door to the parking lot, then turned and pushed through the swinging door on the opposite side of the office which led into the arcade. The moment he stepped into the warm, dim orange glow of the gaming room, his annoyed frown instantly melted into a smile as he looked around at the dense crowd of children filling his establishment, the air thick with their excited voices and bouts of sporadic laughter. He picked his way carefully through them, moving to stand by the front doors, folding his arms with satisfaction as he watched a little girl twisting the steering wheel of _Sugar Rush, _barely tall enough to see the whole screen, giggling riotously and throwing the weight of her whole body into every turn.

_Well . . . maybe not __**all **__kids . . ._

There was a sudden _tap tap tap _on the glass door behind him, and Litwak jumped back to attention, hurriedly opening the door and moving aside as the delivery boys wheeled the new game console in on a hand truck, jostling it carelessly as they crossed the threshold. Litwak winced, jumping in front of them and holding his hands out around the game, ready to catch it if it fell.

"Careful, _careful!" _he pleaded with the boys, as they let the bottom of the game drop flat on the floor with an unceremonious _thunk. _"I don't actually _own _this one yet, I've only got it on loan."

"Yeah, yeah," the gum-chewing young man replied, as if he truly couldn't care less. He grunted as he wedged the hand-truck out from under the unusually tall, unusually colored console, then turned without another word and headed back toward the front doors, followed by his silent partner. Litwak watched them speechlessly for a second, gaze darting between the game and their retreating backs.

"Hey, wait . . . wait a second! Aren't you gonna help me move it in place?"

"Have a nice day, pops," was the only answer the young man tossed over his shoulder before letting the door swing shut behind them.

Litwak's arms fell limply to his sides. He groaned in frustration.

"Punks," he muttered irately under his breath. He turned to get a good look at the new console, scratching his chin thoughtfully as he scanned it up and down with his eyes. _Masterwork. _The game's brightly colored title decal stood out sharply, almost awkwardly against it's solid white casing. It sat there innocently in the middle of the aisle, at least seven and a half feet high, looming over Litwak and the other smaller consoles nearby.

"Now, how in the heck am I s'posed to . . . ?" Litwak trailed off, thinking aloud to himself as he circled the game, contemplating the best way to move the heavy behemoth ten feet over to the space he'd cleared for it in between _Frogger _and _Rampage._

"Hey, whatchya got there, Stan?" a curious, adult's voice suddenly sounded over the hubbub of children talking. "New game?"

Litwak turned around and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Carl, his friend and go-to repairman of almost ten years, weaving his way around the _Sugar Rush _console.

"Boy, am I glad you're still here!" he smiled, clapping a hand on Carl's shoulder. "But I thought you took off an hour ago?"

"Ha, well, I _meant _to, right after I finished giving Pac-man the final once-over . . . but then, I guess I got sucked in playing Tapper's again. Drives me _nuts _to think how much money you've gotten out of me over the years because of that lousy game!"

The two of them chuckled knowingly, then turned to look up at the new game. Carl whistled lowly.

"She sure is a big one, ain't she?"

"You bet," Litwak muttered. "And wouldn't you know it, those delivery clowns just dropped it here like a hot potato and then took off."

Carl shook his head. "No pride in service, these days, Stan, no pride. Well, no sweat, I'll help you move her on in! Where'bouts she headed?"

Working together to slowly, carefully walk the game into place, it took the two of them more than ten minutes to ease _Masterwork _into its niche. Groaning softly, Litwak straightened up, pressing both hands on the small of his back as he stretched.

"_Ahhhh . . . _I tell you, Carl, these things seem to get heavier and heavier every year."

"Ha. That, or we're just getting older. Say . . . what kind of nutty game is this, anyhow? Never heard the name _Masterwork_ before."

"It's some sort of interactive, picture-puzzle game. I've just got it here on a trial loan from the company, sort of a survey test run. Never heard of an _art _game, before, and I just thought, what the heck! It might be nice to try and bring a little class to this place."

"Ha, _class! _That'll be the day," Carl joked, ribbing him affectionately.

Litwak chuckled as he bent over to feed out the game's electrical cord, winding it meticulously around Frogger and across the aisle, stretching it towards the master power strip.

"Well, let's at least give it a chance, eh?" he said softly as he searched for an empty outlet, found one, and firmly inserted the plug. He straightened up and shuffled back to the game, watching the screen with Carl for a few long seconds . . . but it remained black and empty.

"What gives, Stan? Nothing's happening."

Litwak squinted at the dark screen, then grunted and waved his hand at it. "Ahhh, these newer, high-tech games always take a while to boot up. I'm sure she'll be up and running in the morning." Litwak checked his watch again, blinking in surprise at how late it already was. "Speaking of which," he said aside to Carl, then turned to project his voice out over the dull roar of the arcade;

"Alright, kids, last call! Finish up your game, and clear on out."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_BBBZZZPPPZZBT._

The first thing that she consciously experienced . . . the _very _first thing, before anything else, before any sight or touch or sensation, even before any sentient _thought_ . . . the first thing that she consciously experienced, was a sound. A single sound, quiet and distant, as if emanating slowly from a far away point of origin.

_BBBZZZPPPZZBT._

She didn't know it at the time . . . of course, at that moment, she couldn't truthfully be said to really _know_ anything, not even the conceptual fact of her own existence . . . but the sound she heard was the sound of electricity, powerful and invisible, coursing in through the long, winding game cord like a raging river and slowly, steadily working to fill the vast space around her with air and light and substance.

But at that moment, she didn't know it. She didn't know anything, except that she had heard a sound.

Several seconds afterward, the second thing of which she became consciously aware was that in order for a sound to have been heard, there must have been an entity capable of hearing it . . . and the third thing, the third and final fact to occur to her in the same manner as the first two - like a dart, hitting and sticking at random into the rapidly expanding board of her mind - was that she, herself, _was _that entity.

She was there.

She _existed._

Inside of that single instant, like an atom splitting and bursting forth in an explosion of activity countless millions of times larger than itself, and growing larger with every passing fraction of a second, with absolutely no warning or fanfare of any kind . . . all of a sudden, without explanation, she simply _was._ Forming out of the limitless nothingness all around her, appearing in the void like the flame of a candle sparking to life, was a _thought . . . hers . . . _her first real, single, self-contained thought, pulsing in the nothingness like a heartbeat.

_I'm . . . .here._

_I'm here._

"I'm here."

She heard a second sound, coming forth from somewhere much closer and louder than the noise of the electricity. She waited, her newborn consciousness repeating the same thought over and over while simultaneously adding a second one . . . a wish, a wish for the voice to sound again. The moment she willed it, it came, like magic.

"I'm _here."_

This time, she not only heard the strange noise, but also _felt_ it, felt it somewhere warm and immediate . . . and with that single sensation, like the flipping of a switch, she was instantaneously, overwhelmingly, aware of _thousands _more. The torrential flood of awareness and feeling was so powerful that she gasped, and at the same time, suddenly understood what gasping was. She felt the breath rushing inside of her, she heard the echo of the intake resonating around her . . . she understood that she had a throat to breathe with, lungs to fill with the _breath _itself, ears with which to hear herself breathing . . . she had hands to lift up and rest over her chest, she had a _chest, _inside of which was a beating heart_ . . . _she had a _body . . . _she was a _person. _

_She was alive._

In one fearless motion of revelation and amazement beyond the levels of her infant comprehension . . . she opened her eyes.

There was nothing to see. Only darkness surrounded her, flat and impenetrable, defying logic and physicality, extending either forever outwards or forever inwards.

She wriggled her fingers . . . she had _fingers. _She lifted her arms and held her hands up in front of her face . . . _she had arms, she had a face . . . _and the moment they passed into her field of vision, the moment she _saw _them . . . her own hands - the very first image she had ever seen, the image which lent to her the very comprehension of _sight _itself . . . they triggered the simultaneous firing of thousands of synapses in her brain, and she froze, jaw dropping, staring at her thin, pale hands, silhouetted in the eternal blackness, as she floated motionlessly in the void.

All at once, she was paralyzed with thought, paralyzed with knowledge. Without even truly understanding what knowledge _was, _she was inexplicably filled with it, filled with the stupefying reality of all the things she suddenly knew. As soon as she found the will to move, her entire body seized into motion, and she was looking herself all over . . . her arms, her legs, her feet, her clothes, the ends of her hair that floated weightlessly around her . . . . she tossed this way and that, wriggling in the complete freedom of the blackness like a fish wriggling in water, discovering for the very first time the perimeter and limitations and possibility of her own living, conscious body. She opened her mouth and spoke into the void.

"I exist."

She held her hands up again, wiggled her fingers, and laughed.

As she laughed, the echo of her voice rippled out in a visible wave, spreading out from her in all directions and disrupting the blackness, creating a shimmer of light. She watched, gaping and speechless, as the shimmer grew and grew until it had replaced every inch of the darkness with a blinding, consuming white light. Then, all around her in the expanse of whiteness, lines began to blip and blink into existence, shady at first, then hardening into dark, wire shapes as hard and solid as she herself. They formed a cube around her, encapsulating her in a large, floating, three dimensional square, and still they continued multiplying. She spun her head on her shoulders like a swivel to watch them as they raced into reality, her hair swirling around her head. Presently, she became aware of the fact that she was talking to herself, muttering without ceasing in a steady stream as she watched planes of solid color materializing around her, finally obscuring from view the limitless expanse of the game and enclosing her in an opaque box.

"A _game," _she muttered, her large green eyes darting continually back and forth. "A box. I'm inside a box. I'm inside a _box_ inside of a _game_. _Box, _geometric shape containing four lines in two dimensions and four consequently parallel and intersecting planes in three dimensions . . . _game, _an intentional activity with predetermined rules and actions from which one derives enjoyment! Console! _Console! _I exist inside of a box inside of a game inside of a CONSOLE! _Plastic! WORDS! _I'm saying words! VOCABULARY! Mouth, teeth, digits, _female, _motor skills, states of matter, _business, pleasure, perpetuity, commission, ART!"_

Her voice rose higher and higher in a fevered, breathless pitch until she finally shouted the last word at the top of her lungs . . . then stopped, and realized that she had curled into a ball, hugging her thin arms and legs into her small torso, and squeezed her eyes shut . . . and everything had become black again. She sat there, feeling her own face with her hands, gently touching her fingertips to her eyelids.

"Closed," she murmured to herself.

She opened her eyes, and her jaw dropped. " . . . . . _open," _she breathed out in a low, wondering whisper.

She was no longer sitting in a box inside of a game inside of a console.

She was sitting inside of _Masterwork._

She blinked, slowly lowering her hands from her face and squeezing them into fists as she looked around her at the world that had materialized out of nothingness.

The first thing she noticed was that another surface, another object separate from herself, was touching her. She curled her toes around the edge of it, lowered her fingers to tap experimentally against it.

"Chair," she said out loud, testing the word. She was indeed perched atop a spindly, straight-backed chair, her knees hugged to her chest in a fetal position. She peered down past her feet and saw the floor beneath her, the legs of the chair pressing into a large rug. "Persian," she said quietly, narrowing her eyes down at the interweaving colors and patterns in a fresh revival of amazement.

She looked up, and for a full, long moment of silence, simply stared, her mind reeling to catch up as it soaked in the information of her surroundings like a sponge . . . and yet, the more she saw, the more her brain acquired, the calmer she became. The indescribable shock of existence had already worn off, muted into a logical acceptance and replaced with only a burgeoning curiosity regarding what _sort _of existence it was in which she found herself, now that she did indeed exist.

She was sitting in a warm, brightly lit room furnished with all the necessary supplies trappings of an art studio. Resting on a wooden easel directly in front of her was a large white canvas, larger than she herself, obscuring nearly a fourth of the room from her vision. She reached one hand timidly toward it, biting her lip with apprehension and holding her breath without really knowing why.

The instant she touched her fingertip to the center of the white expanse, there was a jolt.

_FFRRZZAP!_

"Ouch!" she yelped, startled only for an instant at her first experience of pain. She drew her finger back, quickly sucking on the tip. There was a second jolt, a fleeting blip of energy that coursed from her skin into her teeth, and seemed to electrify her entire being for a single instant, then vanished. Narrowing her eyes curiously, she slowly took her fingertip from her mouth and examined it. For just a moment, she thought she saw a glowing pinprick of blue light, shining like a pointed beacon right through her skin . . . but then, it too disappeared, leaving no trace behind. She watched the spot where it had been for a few seconds longer, rapidly scanning her fledgling collection of intelligence for some idea of what it might have been, but nothing came to mind.

She looked up, trolling her gaze slowly around the room once more and taking a deep, steadying breath.

"This is . . . . Masterwork. This is my _game," _she said into the empty studio. Light was streaming in from the windows set into the wall behind her, and through them she could see planes of color blinking and fazing into being, still-forming patches of digital information that were compiling to create the world outside of her room.

"This is _Masterwork," _she repeated, the full implications of her reality finally locking into place in her brain. "This is a painting puzzle game, and I'm . . . "

All of a sudden, she became aware of multiple objects, hard and narrow, pressing into the sides of her ribcage as abruptly as if they'd only just materialized there. She undid the front buttons of her baggy white smock and held it open. On either side, each nestled in it's own interior pocket, was a collection of wooden-handled paintbrushes in a multitude of shapes and sizes. She carefully lifted one of them from its pocket and held it in front of her eyes, the golden light from outside playing across the glistening brown hairs.

" . . . . I'm . . . the artist," she finished, closing her fist around the paintbrush handle with a sudden familiarity, as if it not only belonged to her, but had belonged to her for years, invisible years that stretched far back beyond the previous few minutes that she had existed, but were nevertheless absolutely real. Staring harder at the brush, she tried to peer back into those years, to see what else they contained . . . but the harder she looked, the flatter and emptier they appeared. Apart from the brush, and the canvas, and the studio, and the fact that they were hers, there was nothing . . . nothing but a collection of empty shapes, like containers of glass, stretching off into a dimming expanse. Slowly, she replaced the brush and closed the front of her smock, looking once more down at her hands.

"I'm the artist," she repeated, and she knew it was the truth . . . she could feel it, right there in her code, plain as day. She knew it as surely as she knew that she was sitting on a chair.

_But . . . . was that really all there was to know?_

_The artist . . . that's all she was?_

_Why did she feel as if there ought to be more?_

Suddenly, a strange thought occurred to her, and she lifted her green eyes quizzically up to the blank canvas and spoke to it, as if hoping it would answer her.

"What's my name?" she asked out loud.

The canvas said nothing.

There was a long, still moment of silence. Then . . .

_BID-A-LING!_

She jumped at the abrupt, cheerful noise, like three musical notes hiccupping in sequence. There was a sudden blare of light from behind the canvas, glowing through it and illuminating its edges in a square halo . . . then, just as quickly, it faded back into darkness.

She had to get up, had to go and see what was there on the fourth wall. Her heart hammering in the bottom of her throat, she swallowed thickly . . . closed her eyes for a brief, steadying moment . . . then put her feet down on the floor.

She stayed there for a few seconds, marveling at the new sensation of the warm, slightly scratchy rug pressing against the pads of her bare feet - and then she was filled with an overwhelming lust to touch more things, to feel everything in her world. With only a split second's hesitation, she braced her hands on the back of the chair and pushed herself onto her feet.

The instant she was standing upright, the concept of gravity, which had previously been only lingering hazily at the periphery of her understanding, became abruptly and completely clear. Her knees trembled slightly at the phenomenon of having to support weight, and for a few seconds she clamped her hand like a vice on the lip of the easel to steady herself. Slowly, barely able to contain her brimming excitement, she gently slid the easel and the canvas a few inches aside and took her first step.

Behind the canvas was the fourth wall of her studio, very much resembling the other three, but without any furniture pushed against it. There was a single large window set into each of its far ends, and a third window . . . a strange, dark window with no sill, more like a four-foot-high pane of unmarked black glass . . . embedded straight ahead of her, in the very center of the wall.

Oddly captivated by the curious, dark window, she took her next steps, walking slowly towards the fourth wall, her balance improving only incrementally with each forward motion. As she drew closer and closer to it, she gradually realized that the window was _not _entirely dark . . . here and there, like stars glowing faintly through a thick cover of fog, there were lights, colored lights that moved back and forth in rhythmic repetitions, and around the lights were the dim outlines of large, dark shapes, looming far away in the distance.

Mesmerized, she reached out and tapped the strange window once with her index finger . . . then, swallowing her thundering heartbeat, she laid both hands flat on the glass and leaned forward, peering through it with the tip of her nose flattening gently against the cool, smooth surface.

For one breathtaking moment, she stayed there, rooted to the spot, her face pressing harder and harder into the glass. She was struck speechless by the sheer size of the dark, endless world that sprawled out in every direction on the other side of the window. As she was staring, she thought she felt a faint sensation of warmth and activity behind her eyes, like a lingering jolt of electricity escaping through her widely drawn pupils . . . but she was too transfixed with the sight before her to give it any thought. Her mind reeled, the new information tumbling and swarming over itself like a hive of bees, her brain whirring and churning at a fantastic speed to calibrate this new revelation into her being.

_That . . . out there, those shapes in the darkness . . . ._

_. . . that was the world. The world outside of Masterwork._

She didn't know how long she stood there, simply drinking everything in. It might have been one minute, it might have been ten . . . when she finally peeled her face off of the glass and turned back to look at her studio, the boggling juxtaposition of the size of her self-contained world beside the seemingly infinite expanse of the world outside painted the interior of her game in an entirely new light. She now found herself fascinated by the different objects stationed around the room, and began walking in slow, wobbling circles beside the walls, stopping every few feet to examine something new.

When she neared the window, she was surprised by an abrupt new sensation . . . a faint, almost imperceptible breath of air, like a touch of living cold licking gently over the back of her hands. She realized that it was a draft, issuing in through a crack at the bottom of the window pane. Instinctively, she unlocked the latch at the top of the sill and pushed the window open, struggling as the wooden frame stuck and creaked. Without the slightest hint of caution, she plunged through the opening, throwing her head and shoulders outside and leaning with her abdomen over the sill. The wind picked up immediately and whipped her hair fiercely this way and that, blowing it on and off over half her face. She barely noticed. She was staring once more, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, out onto a landscape she had not known existed until that moment, and yet somehow knew and recognized as well as she would recognize her own hands.

She was on the second floor of a tall, narrow building. Winding at the foot of the building was a long strip of white, rocky beach, and beyond that, spreading out to the ends of the horizon and beyond, with large square sections still blipping with flashes of calibrating code . . . was an ocean.

"Ocean," she whispered to herself, and her voice was snatched up in the wind and carried away like a trickle of smoke. "Ocean . . . sky . . . Masterwork . . . _world. _This is the world."

Her heart began to pound again as she gazed out at the calm, gently rolling waves of orange and blue . . . she lifted her hand and pressed it over her chest, just to feel the beats pulsing under her palm again.

"This is the _world_ . . . and _I'm here, in it."_

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Vanellope rubbed her chin thoughtfully with one hand and leaned forward on the bench, narrowing her eyes critically at the Royal Raceway game screen hovering in front of them on a marshmallow cloud. They were sitting in the front row of the popcorn candy-stand bleachers at the raceway finish line, the Wreck-It Mobile parked near. . . or rather, partially _crashed into. . . _the front railing of the stand, rumpling the red and white cloth covering . . . but the two of them had all but forgotten it anyway. Their gazes were both transfixed on the hovering Sugar Rush first-person camera, which had been switched over to one-way panoramic mode and was zoomed in directly on the Masterwork game screen across the aisle of the arcade.

"Oooookaaay," Vanellope murmured slowly, breaking the dedicated silence for the first time in over twenty minutes. "Let me see if I understand. You were . . . . . Ralph? Hey, Ralph, you awake in there?" she paused, nudging his elbow and just barely breaking him from his captivated stare at the Masterwork screen. He shook himself lightly, his eyes opening wider, but his gaze never diverting.

"Yeah! Yeah, go ahead," he muttered, hunching further forward toward the hover-cam.

"Right . . . so, you were just sitting there in your bad guy sewing circle, like you do every week, when you happened to look up at the ceiling and see the game turn on."

Ralph nodded slowly, as if he were only half-listening. "Uh-huh."

"You caught a glimpse . . . a _single glimpse, _I'm to understand . . . of Little Big Sleeves, here . . ." Vanellope gestured to the girl in the Masterwork screen, who had been sitting at her easel, clumsily painting something - just out of their line of vision - on the large canvas in front of her ever since they'd zoomed in to spy on her game. " . . . and then, something just . . . . came over you. You go tearing out of Mrs. Pac-man like some kind of escaped gorilla, and the only thing that stops you from barging straight into this dame's game is a posse of SPs with a taser. Which . . . by the way, I'm pretty upset that I missed," she chuckled briefly aside to herself.

Ralph barely blinked in response. "Uh-huh."

Vanellope narrowed her eyes at him. "And _now," _she continued in a louder voice, suddenly scaling up onto his shoulder and snapping her fingers sharply in front of his face, finally getting his attention, "_Now, _you've got it in that thick skull of yours that as soon as that game finishes calibrating, you're _still _going to go charging straight in, whether you really want to or not. Is that about right?"

Ralph shuddered as if waking from a trance, looking away from the screen. "Yup," he muttered dejectedly.

"And you want me to try and talk you out of it."

Ralph hesitated, then sighed exasperatedly, and ran one hand over his head. "Well . . . I _did, _but . . . now I'm afraid you won't even be _able to. _I mean . . . look at me, kid! I can't even see her on _this _little screen without being half hypnotized! I don't who she is, or _what _she's doing to me, but . . . I just can't control myself! I can't get her out of my _head._ It's like . . . I don't just _want _to meet her, I _need to. _And I don't think I'll be able to stop myself from doing it." He sighed again, turned to look at Vanellope with pleading eyes. "What do you think, kid? . . . . I'm crazy, right? Tell me I'm crazy."

Vanellope pursed her lips, looking at him thoughtfully for a second. She climbed calmly down from his shoulder and sat back down on the bench beside him.

"You're crazy," she said presently, her voice flat and toneless.

Ralph nodded glumly in agreement, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "I don't know _what _I was thinking . . . after everything that happened with the others in - "

"You're crazy, _and_ . . . " Vanellope interrupted abruptly, looking back up at him. " . . . . I think you should do it."

Ralph's eyes widened and paused for a moment, then shot her a disbelieving stare.

"You . . . you do?"

Vanellope nodded understandingly. "Listen. I'm not gonna pretend I know what the big flaming whoop is about this _Masterwink _broad . . ."

"Master_work."_

"Yeah, sure. But what_ever _it is . . . whatever it is about her that's got you so riled up . . . well . . . maybe it's . . . I don't know, Ralph. Maybe it's . . . you know, a _sign."_

Ralph blinked, a faint ray of hope tinged with uncertainty lighting in his eyes. "A sign of _what?"_

Vanellope squirmed with embarrassment, hiding her face as her cheeks blushed faintly. "Geez, Ralph, I don't _know, _just . . . a _sign, _okay? A sign that maybe . . . maybe there _is _someone out there for you. That maybe . . . "

She hesitated, then slowly reached over and laid her hand on Ralph's arm, looking up to meet his bewildered gaze.

" . . . maybe . . . you just have to be brave enough to look again."

A/N: Ohhhh, boy. Welp, it's beginning to happen. The steam. The steam, she is a-runnin out. I'm going to try my absolute hardest to keep updating in a timely manner for as long as I can, but . . . for reals, if you don't want to see this story abandoned, now's the time to give a serious shout out.


	11. Chapter 10: The Game is Afoot

A/N: Surprise! The steam is returning, and it's all thanks to you lovely people! Thank you to everyone who reviewed with their feedback and support :) As a reward, I present you with the longest chapter yet! Here's looking at you guys.

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 10: The Game is Afoot_

_"You're sure you don't want me to come with you? I could sleep over. We could eat waffles and throw things at Gene's window, and stare at your bricks for a while. It'd be fun. Are you suuure? . . . . not even to get your mind off things?"_

_Ralph had only smiled wearily at her, reaching down to scruff her hair with his palm as they made their way to the top of the rainbow bridge, approaching the Sugar Rush game portal._

_"Nah," he muttered, trying to sound more relaxed than he really felt. "Thanks, kid, but even throwing things at Gene's window isn't going to help get my mind off __**this. **__I think . . . I think I just need to . . . think things over."_

_Vanellope sighed, but returned a begrudgingly acceptant smile. "Well don't overdo it on the thinking, alright? You've practically already had one aneurism today."_

_Ralph rolled his eyes and laughed sarcastically as he paused just outside the game exit. "Ha, ha. See you later, kid." He turned to leave, but had barely passed beneath the chocolate arch when there was a sudden scamper of tiny feet and a fierce tug on his right thumb. He looked down and saw Vanellope, pulling him back, with her hands closed tightly around his finger and her wide eyes pinning him with a deliberate, sober expression that made his half-scowl instantly vanish._

_"Seriously, Ralph," she said quietly, letting go of his hand and straightening to her full height. "Everything's going to be fine. You don't have to be so scared."_

_He quickly averted his gaze, swallowing the immediate flush that threatened to warm his cheeks._

_"I'm not . . . scared," he mumbled unconvincingly under his breath. _

_Vanellope's eyes only softened further. "You don't have to be so __**worried, **__then. I mean it, Ralph. No matter what happens . . . the important thing is for you to __**try."**_

_Ralph stood there, halfway through the gate, holding her wide-eyed gaze for a moment longer . . . then he exhaled slowly, hanging his head and turning back into the dark tunnel._

_"See you, Vanellope," he repeated softly, and walked away, leaving her standing there alone in the pink sunlight. _

Now, as he trudged slowly through Game Central Station only a few minutes later, Ralph was more certain than ever that the situation was hopeless, and he might as well forget the entire thing. The more he rolled it over in his head, playing out every possible scenario he could imagine over and over again, the more futile it seemed to become . . . he couldn't for the life of him envision any way in which simply waltzing into Masterwork and introducing himself to . . . _whatever_ her name was, wouldn't end in humiliation at best and complete catastrophe at worst. All at once the memories of his forty-seven consecutive failed romantic encounters in DDR - not to mention the awful affair with the _stage -_ came rushing back to him, dredging up out of his recent repressed memory and hitting him one by one like the spokes of a flywheel.

"Hey! You there!"

Ralph paused for a moment in his melancholy recollection, looking up toward the direction of the voice. He groaned out loud when he saw that it was the SP, _still _standing at attention outside of the Masterwork gate. He had his hand resting on the taser at his hip and was crouched at the ready, squinting warily at Ralph as he passed.

"Yeah, _you!" _he half shouted. "You better not be getting any funny ideas! I've got my _eye on you." _He pointed two fingers to his own eyes, then spun them menacingly toward Ralph.

Ralph groaned again, shaking his head at the obnoxious blue man and continuing his weary traipse back toward Fix-It Felix Jr. He kept his gaze trained on the floor in a half-lidded stare of listless defeat, his thoughts swimming and struggling futilely for another moment before finally quieting into blank resignation.

_It simply __**wasn't **__going to work. That's all there was to it. It hadn't worked at the stupid DDR party, and it wasn't going to work on Wednesday night. He could practically already see it . . . the look on the Masterwork girl's face when she answered the knock on her door, and saw __**him **__standing there, a six hundred and forty-nine pound, slack-jawed idiot with nothing to say . . . she would laugh, she would cringe, she would slam the door in his face and pull her curtains down._

In spite of himself, Ralph heaved a heavy sigh as he crossed the station rest area and drew near to his own gate.

_That look . . . the look of someone who was trying to at least __**pretend **__to be polite when they saw his face . . . but who truthfully wanted nothing more than for him to just go away._

_He'd seen it more times than he could count, practically every day for thirty years . . . and he would, virtually without a doubt, be seeing it again if he really did venture into Masterwork that Wednesday night. _

_And yet . . . deep down, he knew . . . he was still going to do it._

_Why? What in the world could possibly be wrong with him?_

"Ralph!" a familiar voice suddenly sounded from nearby, breaking him from his gloomy train of thought. Ralph looked up, blinking in surprise to see his orange group therapy leader floating hurriedly towards him across the station.

"Clyde!" he blurted automatically, politely dropping onto one knee to give the small Pac-ghost better access to his face. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing! No . . . nothing, Ralph, I . . . I just . . . " Clyde was slightly out of breath, gasping in between words for a few seconds before clearing his throat and regaining his composure. "I tried to catch you before you ran out of the meeting, but I . . . and you . . . why _did _you run out, anyway?"

Ralph started and looked away sheepishly, his mind racing for an excuse. "_Oh, _that . . . yeah, that, ah, probably seemed a little strange, huh? . . . I was just . . . or, that is . . . I just thought for a second that I left . . . the _stove_, on, back in my game. Ha, ha . . . false alarm, though."

Clyde blinked. Ralph grinned awkwardly.

"Oh . . . um, ok," Clyde brushed it off, a note of seriousness returning to his gaze. "Well, as I was saying, Ralph, I wanted to catch you, to . . . . to apologize."

"Apologize?" Ralph repeated, genuinely surprised. "For what?"

"For . . . forcing you to talk about your DDR . . . experience," Clyde lowered his gaze apologetically. "I didn't know the . . . er, _details_ . . . I just overheard Pac-man saying he saw you there, and I thought it would be a good topic for discussion . . . you know, overcoming our comfort zones, and all that . . . I didn't mean to make you - "

"Hey, hey! No worries, OG," Ralph interrupted, holding up his hand to stop him and smiling reassuringly. "Like I said, it's not that big a deal. If you really want to know, it sort of . . . ha, sort of felt _good _to talk about it."

"Really?" Clyde said brightly. "You're sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure! Really, no harm done, Clyde."

The orange ghost breathed a small sigh of relief. "Well . . . _that's _good to hear."

They sat there for a moment, smiling at each other, until the silence slowly began to grow awkward. Ralph winced with an uncomfortable smile and glanced once around the arcade, eager for a way to change the subject, or better yet, excuse himself from the conversation . . . then, his eyes lit up like light bulbs when he suddenly spied the Pac-man gate a few portals down. He turned back to Clyde, holding his arms out and beaming enthusiastically.

"But _hey!" _he exclaimed. "What are you doing out here, talkin' to _me? _Your game is restarting tomorrow morning! Shouldn't you be celebrating . . . somewhere?"

Clyde chuckled, nodding agreeably. "Yes, I suppose you're right. The whole ghost crew is getting together in Frogger tonight, as a matter of fact . . . but actually, Ralph, I didn't just come to find you. I was also hoping to drop in on that new game . . . ah, Masterwork, I think it's called . . . ?"

At that, Ralph's eyes widened and his smile instantly vanished.

" . . . Yes, I wanted to introduce myself to the antagonists and invite them to the next meeting . . . but wouldn't you know, it turns out the game is closed for forty-eight hours. Guess I'll have to try on Wednesday. Well, anyway . . . I'm glad there are no hard feelings, Ralph! Take it easy, and I'll see you next week, huh?"

"WAIT!" Ralph shouted much louder than was necessary, stopping Clyde in mid-turn and paralyzing him there with a wide-eyed, deadpan stare. Other characters passing nearby jumped and paused for a moment to give him weird looks. Ralph looked around at the suddenly very silent game station, then hunched into as small of a ball as possible and cleared his throat, speaking again in a voice much quieter than was necessary. "I mean, wait. Uh . . . why . . . why don't you let _me _deliver the invite, Clyde?"

The orange ghost squinted one eye in confusion. "Huh?"

"You know, the, the invitation to Bad-Anon, for the Masterwork bad guys. Why don't . . . _I_ go on in, and give it to them? I think . . . " his brain searched rapidly for some of Clyde's favorite psychological buzzwords. "I think it would be . . . a really big _step, _for me, you know? Really _affirming_, overcome my _comfort zone, _like you said . . .just walk on into a new game, and say, _here I am, _I'm a _bad guy_, let's be friends! . . . . . you . . . you know?"

Clyde looked back in stunned silence for another second . . . then lit up with a warm, empathetic glow, as if he'd just watched a gimp puppy try to take its first few steps.

"Why. . . I think that's a fantastic idea! Really! I'm very proud of all the progress you've made, Ralph."

Ralph tried to maintain a calm smile in return, but his heart was already pounding and his palms were just imperceptibly beginning to sweat. _This was it, this was the answer . . . he had a way in, he had something real to __**say **__to her . . . why hadn't he thought of it sooner?_ The sudden burst of excitement threatened to overtake him, but Ralph forced himself to maintain, swallowing thickly and summoning all the sincerity he could muster.

"Thanks, Clyde. That, uh . . . means a lot," he straightened to his full height clasping his hands together and rocking slightly on his heels. "Well, I don't want to keep you from your party! Go on and have a good time, and congratulations again!"

Clyde shook his head once, smiling slyly. "No, Ralph. Congratulations to _you."_

Ralph waved casually until Clyde had floated a safe distance away toward the Frogger game portal, then spun on his heel and made a break for Fix-It Felix Jr. As he went, a feeling of euphoric confidence - not unlike the feeling he had experienced one year previous, when he'd crammed himself into a suit of robo-armor and snuck into Hero's Duty - was steadily rising up inside of him, higher and higher like steam pressure building behind a valve. All at once, he couldn't seem to keep still. His hands and feet were tapping excitedly at the floor and handrail of the Fix-It Felix train as it clamored along the tunnel and pulled into the Niceland station. When the rattling clink of its wheels fell silent, he realized that he was humming to himself. Without pausing, he squeezed out of the car, stumbled onto the station platform, then, on a sudden, elated whim, turned back around and vaulted straight over the train instead of walking the long way around, nearly rocking it off the tracks and landing in the grass on the other side with a satisfying _tthhhump._

Dusting his hands off and cheerily whistling the Sugar Rush theme music to himself ( probably because it was the most upbeat tune he could think of ), Ralph set off toward the East Niceland gate at a jovial stroll, swinging his arms widely as he walked.

In that single moment in Game Central Station, it was as if a switch had been flipped inside of him, and all of his wrestling, knotted-up feelings of apprehension and imminent failure had transformed instantly into dauntless optimism. It was so incredibly simple, he almost couldn't believe how worked up he'd been just a few minutes before. Why hadn't it occurred to him immediately? Delivering an invitation to Bad-Anon . . . he couldn't have thought up a better icebreaker if he tried! Not only did it give him a perfectly legitimate, _not_-insane reason to go unannounced into Masterwork, but it also broke the news that he was a bad guy to the girl with as positive a spin as he could hope for. Even though the odds seemed quite slim that the girl herself was an antagonist, it still gave him an almost _noble _pretense for talking to her.

_A better pretense than having Calhoun corral women toward him at a bar, anyway! _he couldn't help thinking, with a scoffing grin.

_Maybe . . . maybe, it was just possible, that this would actually work._

_Maybe_ _she . . . maybe, she could actually be . . ._

He stopped himself from finishing the thought, almost afraid he would jinx it. As he neared the brick gate to East Niceland, a flash of movement from in front of the apartment building caught his eye, and he paused.

It was Felix, waving to him enthusiastically from the paved patio outside the front entrance to the building. He was wearing a white apron over his work clothes and standing beside a double-wide charcoal grill, one hand gripped tightly, not around his magic hammer, but a metal spatula, which he was using to flip burgers. Behind him, Calhoun and all of the Nicelanders were seated at long, twin picnic tables heaped with cookout fixings. Calhoun quirked one eye weirdly at Felix's fervent waving, then followed his gaze and noticed Ralph standing there a dozen yards off. She raised her beer bottle toward him in acknowledgement, smiling good-naturedly before throwing back a heavy swig.

"Ralph!" Felix was shouting to him with a broad grin. "You hungry, brother?"

Maybe it was only an overlap of the bubbling excitement already seizing hold of him, but even if it was, Ralph didn't care . . . at that moment, he couldn't recall having ever been happier to see his friends all in one place. He only wished, with a momentary pang of regret, that he'd taken Vanellope up on her offer to spend the night in his game, so that she could have been there to join them.

"Am I!" he answered loudly, hurrying across the grass toward the makeshift picnic gathering. "Am I _ever. _C'mere, _pipsqueak!"_ Without waiting for him to reply, Ralph grabbed Felix and hoisted him up into a brief, crushing, one-armed hug, rubbing his knuckles affectionately on the top of his head. Felix yelped in surprise, then broke into an astonished laugh and swatted uselessly at Ralph's hand with his arm. Ralph dropped him back on his feet, and he staggered for a second, still laughing breathlessly.

"Well . . . _you _certainly seem to have cheered up!" he observed happily, readjusting the brim of his cap.

Behind them, the others watched in momentarily stunned silence. Mary leaned toward Calhoun and muttered inquisitively under her breath.

"I thought Felix said Ralph was in a _bad _mood?"

Calhoun smiled at her husband and his antagonist for another moment, then chuckled and took another swig of her beer.

"Well, everybody loves a barbecue," she shrugged. She nudged Mary gently with her elbow, scooting everyone four feet down on the long bench, then raising her voice toward Ralph, who was now exchanging playful mock-punches with Felix.

"Hey, Wreck-It!" she called, tapping the wood next to her with her knuckles when he turned to look. "Saved you a seat. Come on and park it, big guy, and let the man finish grilling."

Ralph grinned and moved toward the table, edging around several open coolers. He paused next to one and fished out a glass bottle of root beer with two fingertips. As he inched himself carefully in between the bench and the table, trying to jostle the plates of burger fixings as little as possible, the Nicelanders all chattered their friendly greetings to him at once, bouncing up and down in jerky eight bit motion.

"Good to have you, Ralph!"

"Long time no see!"

"I was hoping you'd show up," Mary said brightly, lifting up a pie that was sitting on the table in front of her. "I made a special treat, just for you . . . rhubarb, your favorite!"

"Aww, Mary! You didn't have to do that," Ralph smiled bashfully at her . . . then, without thinking, he dropped his full weight down on the end of the bench.

_BAM!_

_Sproing!_

"AAAAHH!"

The opposite end of the picnic table flipped up like a see-saw the second Ralph plunked down. Gene, who had made a distasteful face and inched away as far as possible from Ralph as soon as he arrived, had been seated at the farthest edge of the bench and went catapulting up into the air with an electric sound blip, while Calhoun, the others, and the plates of food all slid toward Ralph's end, cramming together against his left side. Ralph's eyes bugged and he quickly jumped up, letting the table crash back down on all fours just before the food slid off. Felix, Calhoun, and the Nicelanders, who had immediately tensed up and reached their arms out towards the plates, all breathed a quick sigh of relief, relaxing their shoulders.

"_Doooo somethiiiing!" _Gene wailed suddenly from high above them, slowing at the top of his arch near the fourth story windows and then sailing back down toward the ground.

"I got it, I _got it!" _Ralph cried, stumbling out from the table, reeling a few steps backward with his arm stretched high over his head, and then . . . _bloink! _caught Gene with one hand, like a baseball dropping into a catcher's mitt.

For a second, everyone was quiet.

Then, all together, the Nicelanders simultaneously erupted into a jubilant cheer, a combination of clapping and stunned laughter . . . all except Gene, who scowled fiercely as Ralph set him down, muttering under his breath and rubbing his backside as he stomped back to resume his seat. Ralph chuckled, slightly red with embarrassment.

"Ahh . . . heh, uh . . . sorry, Gene," he laughed apologetically, picking up his small bottle of root beer and popping the cap off with one thumb. "I think I'll just . . . stand over here."

Calhoun, her shoulders still shaking slightly with laughter, gave him a fraternal wink. "Nice catch, Carlton _Fist!_"

Felix approached the table with a tray of cooked burgers, wiping a tear from his eye as his last chortles faded.

"Oooh, that was _too _much. You alright there, Gene?"

The other Nicelanders laughed again in chorus as Gene grumpily straightened the neck of his sweater and muttered something indistinguishable.

Felix shook his head, smiling innocently. "Ha! . . . ah, well, no harm, no foul. Dig in, everybody!"

Minutes later, when everyone was happily munching their burgers and murmuring random comments of approval, Felix moved aside from the table to where Ralph was standing in the grass and nudged him in the forearm. He smiled and held up a plate with a Ralph-sized burger on it.

"Everybody had such a rough Monday, I figured we could all stand a little fun," he explained, gesturing to the picnic as Ralph gratefully accepted the sandwich. "Besides, it _is _summertime!"

"Thanks, Felix," Ralph replied warmly, smiling at his diminutive friend.

"Ahhhh, it's nothing. I'm just happy to see you smiling again! . . . what brought about the mood swing, if you don't mind my asking?"

Ralph choked slightly on the mouthful of burger he was swallowing, gulping it thickly and pounding himself on the chest a few times. He cleared his throat, mentally debating how much to tell his protagonist about everything that had happened that evening . . . and quickly determined that he'd rather not have a big scene made over it, as least not until he had something of greater success to report.

"Oh, just . . . you know, I had some time to think about what you said. Went to a BA meeting, visited Vanellope . . . just got my head together, and I thought, 'You know what? Felix is right.' Maybe there _is _someone out there for me . . . I just have to keep looking."

The moment he said it, his mind's eye was filled with the image of the Masterwork girl, sitting at her easel and painting, her green eyes darting back and forth over the canvas with electric energy and ceaseless curiosity . . .

_Just have to be brave enough to look again._

Felix only grinned, oblivious to the faint tone of absence in Ralph's voice. He clapped him on the arm, giving him one last encouraging nudge.

"Glad to hear it, friend," he said warmly, lingering for a moment, then returning to the picnic table.

Ralph watched him for a moment, then slowly turned and lifted his gaze up to the game screen, hovering high overhead like an enormous, darkened window, looking out into the nighttime arcade. As he stared at it, he suddenly became aware of a faint, white glow, the very edge of a diffuse halo of light just visible in the bottom corner of the Fix-It Felix screen. Ralph's heart thudded once with added force when he realized that it was the light from the Masterwork game, still glowing like a white beacon in the dark arcade. As he watched it, the hopeful anticipation fluttering inside of him quieted slightly, hardening and fusing together into a solid shape of determination.

_I just have to be brave enough to look again._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It was only ten o'clock a.m., and already the following Tuesday morning in Litwak's arcade was shaping up to be every bit as busy as the day before. There were times when it almost became impossible to cross from one end of the gaming room to the other in under five minutes, so thick and jostling were the crowds of children and young teenagers. Not only that, but the temperature outside was a record high for so early in June, and the atmosphere in the crowded room was growing increasingly stifling . . . yet, even this didn't appear to hinder more and more kids from packing in.

"What _gives?" _Mr. Litwak asked one of his regulars - the eleven-year-old blonde girl with large, gawky glasses who had been coming to his arcade faithfully for months - as he switched on the rotating table-fan which he'd sacrificed from his office to cool off the area near the prize counter. "Last summer wasn't nearly this hectic, and it's _twice _as hot now as it was then."

The little girl pushed her glasses up on her nose, shrugging carelessly as she waited for Litwak to change her three dollars.

"It's probably because they closed down the public pool three blocks from here," she answered, holding out her hand for the twelve quarters Litwak carefully placed there. "All the kids from my class who used to spend all summer there found about _this _place, instead."

Litwak chuckled softly as he came out from behind the prize counter and folded his arms, looking over the sea of heads and faces hunched around game consoles.

"Well, not that I'm com_plaining _or anything . . . but at this rate, I'm going to have to spring for an air conditioner before the end of the month!"

The blonde girl only smiled, shrugging again and hurrying to jump in line for Sugar Rush. Litwak, perspiring lightly even in his short-sleeved ref's jersey, set off to slowly make his rounds at the perimeter of the room, keeping a sharp eye out for any squabbles or rough-housing. Just that last Saturday, he'd had to break up a real-life fight between two teenage boys over a lost Mortal Kombat match . . .

As he passed by Pac-man, Litwak couldn't help but beam proudly in its direction. As soon as they saw that the out-of-order sign had been removed that morning and that the game was finally back on, kids had crowded around the old console like moths to a light bulb, excitedly dropping in quarter after quarter. He'd had to establish a one-game-at-a-time policy right off the bat, just so the same kid wouldn't hog the machine for five turns in a row.

And Pac-man wasn't the only game causing a stir that day . . . the new game, _Masterwork, _had been lit up and ready for action first thing that morning when he unlocked the doors, just as Litwak had predicted. He had read the game's description on the design company's webpage before he ordered it, but even so he was pleasantly surprised at the unusual look and feel of the game when he gave it a test run, before opening the arcade. He'd never seen a game with controls quite like it before . . . instead of any buttons or joysticks, the only controller was a fourteen-inch plastic paintbrush with rubber bristles that communicated wirelessly with the screen. The music the game played was a medley of famous classical themes - Litwak laughed out loud when he recognized a tune from an opera his Nana had dragged him to decades ago - reworked through an electric, techno-sounding filter. The game's only character, the curly-haired artist, either played against the gamer in competition mode, or helped guide them through different challenges in puzzle mode. The multitude of mini-games - which each involved painting lines on the screen to direct a ball into a goal, or to recreate a preset image as fast as possible, or to complete a timed maze, or some other challenge - were simple, but addictive . . . Litwak found himself three quarters in, totally engrossed, when a pair of ten-year-olds knocked loudly on the front doors and he realized he had played ten minutes past opening time.

The kids had noticed the new game and pounced on it straightaway . . . which, admittedly, they did with _every_ new game that appeared . . . but Litwak couldn't help getting a distinct feeling that this one was different. It was totally unlike any other game in the arcade, and despite being digital rather than analog, the control motions were heavy and sturdy, resembling the satisfyingly clunky functions of the old 80s consoles much more closely than the flimsy, weightless controls of the newer games. Even though the game was only a prototype on loan to him for field testing, Litwak already felt a burgeoning attachment to it, and was determined to save up enough money to buy the game permanently at the end of its six-month trial run.

Suddenly, breaking him from his thoughtful reverie, Litwak felt a tug on the end of his jersey. He looked down and smiled when he saw a red-headed, kindergarten-aged boy pulling at his shirt.

"Mithta Litwak," the boy lisped, his two front teeth missing. "My brother thaid to come get you. He thayth thomething'th wrong with Mathterwork."

Litwak sighed, making a face and scratching his head as he followed the little boy over to the tall white console. "Already?" his face fell disappointedly. "Ahhh, and she was just doing so well, too . . . "

The little red-head's older brother, a lanky preteen, was muttered with frustration and waving the paintbrush over the same spot on the screen again and again, trying to select one of the mini-games and getting a small blue error message at the bottom of the screen. Litwak looked over his shoulder, pushing his bottom lip out thoughtfully. The artist girl was standing in the middle of the screen, like always, blinking, holding her palette and paintbrush and smiling patiently straight ahead.

"Select a mini-game!" she repeated on loop every seven seconds in a bright, bubbly voice that only served to further infuriate the little boy's older brother. After one more unsuccessful swipe at the mini-game button hovering on the edge of the screen, he dropped the paintbrush in disgust and turned incredulously to Mr. Litwak.

"It won't let me pick a game!" he sputtered, thrusting his hands toward the screen. "That message came on the screen, and now you can't select any of the mini-games!"

Litwak narrowed his eyes, peering closer to where the boy's hand was pointing. At the bottom of the screen, flashing in tiny blue letters, were the words, _"Error . . . game is not connected to the web."_

Litwak blinked, raising an eyebrow in confusion. "'Connected to the _web?' _As in . . . the _internet?"_

"Well, _duh, _the internet!" the boy scoffed. "Did the ethernet come unhooked or something?"

"Ether-_what?" _Litwak said blankly, straightening up. "Oh, wait . . . you mean one of those long, blue cords for the internet, right?"

The boy rolled his eyes. "_Yeah, _Mr. Litwak, one of the _long blue ones."_

Litwak scratched his head again. "Well, that doesn't make sense . . . I didn't read anything about this game needing an _internet _hook-up . . . what kind of _arcade _game needs a . . . ?"

"Listen, are you gonna _fix _the game or not?" the boy demanded, pointing at the screen again. Immediately, a chorus of other kids who had gathered around to listen to the commotion chimed in.

"Fix the game, Mr. Litwak!"

"Come on, fix it! I didn't get a chance to play yet!"

"Alright, alright, settle down, kids," Litwak held his hands out to calm the group. "Let me just hop into my office and see if I've got a spare . . . one of those things."

The kids groaned impatiently as Litwak picked his way through the crowded arcade and pushed through the swinging door to his office. He blinked in surprise when he noticed that his computer was on . . . _that's strange, he didn't remember booting it up yet this morning . . . _but quickly forgot about it, opening and closing the drawers of his desk in search of a spare ethernet cable. Finally, he found one . . . the extra-long auxiliary cord he'd gotten from somewhere or another at least three years ago and then forgotten about . . . coiled up in a tight knot at the back of his junk drawer. He snatched it, fumbled with the knot for a moment, plugged one end into the internet jack in the corner of his office, then triumphantly hurried back into the arcade, carefully feeding out the blue cable at the edge of the aisles as he went.

"Have to duct tape that down later . . . " he reminded himself aloud as he finally reached the Masterwork nook. "Ok, kids, give it some air."

The children obediently took a few steps back, watching curiously as Litwak got creakily down on his knees and craned his neck around the back of the machine, searching for the right port. After thirty seconds, he spotted it . . . a tiny plug-in protected by a black plastic cap. Litwak eyed it confusedly for a moment, then shrugged, pulled out the protective cover, and plugged in the ethernet cable.

For a few seconds, the game was quiet. The children stared anxiously at the screen as Litwak slowly got back to his feet, waiting eagerly . . . and then, just when they were about to complain that nothing was happening . . .

_Bid-a-ling!_

The game made a happy, musical chirp, and the blue error message vanished. For a split second, an almost imperceptible ripple of motion seemed to glitch across the artist girl's face, her expression faltering . . . but then, before one could have said to have really seen it all, it was gone, and she was smiling again.

"Select a mini-game!"

Litwak shrugged in surprise. "Huh! That did the trick! Well, whaddaya know."

The boy waved the paintbrush wand over one of the floating game buttons, and the game chirped again, playing the intro music as the game pieces appeared in place, covering the screen with the artist still peeking out visibly from behind, as if on the other side of a glass window with dots painted on it.

"Paint-ball Plinko!" the girl said the name of the game out loud as the instructions briefly flashed overhead.

"_Sweet!" _the boy grinned, raising the game wand and hunching at the ready. The other kids crowded densely around behind him to watch, and his red-headed little brother flashed Litwak a gap-toothed smile.

"Thankth, Mishtah Litwak!"

Litwak chuckled softly to himself and nodded, watching as the older boy gleefully dashed digital paint-marks over the screen, wielding the brush like a samurai sword while the other kids cheered him on.

_Yes . . . he had a good feeling about this game._

Still . . . that error message _had _been a little odd. What kind of arcade game required an internet connection . . . especially when it had been working just fine up until that moment without one? It was a little strange, to say the least. Litwak made a mental note to write an email to the design company and ask them about it, then turned and headed back to the prize counter, where his blonde, bespectacled regular was waiting with a fistful of tickets.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It had been almost twenty-four hours since she had first made the discovery that she existed.

Now, with her smile still plastered on her face and her arms holding her brush and palette at the ready, she stood at attention in front of the game screen - which, as she had found out when the first pair of quarters had been deposited in her game early that morning, extended out from the wall on a collapsing, robotic arm, jutting in to the center of the room and stopping in front of her easel at the beginning of every game, so that the players zoomed in on her . . . as well as expanding to twice its former size, so that it reached nearly from the floor to the ceiling - for a full twenty minutes, waiting for Litwak to shut off the lights and lock the doors.

She watched, struggling against the urge to drop her painting supplies and press her face against the glass again, to see more clearly, as the children begrudgingly filed out of the arcade, dragging their feet and dawdling at game screens whenever they could. A little girl with braided black hair, so short that only her face appeared above the bottom level of the game screen, smiled at her as she was passing by Masterwork on her way to the door, and something inside of her seemed to melt. She followed the little girl with her eyes until she was out of sight, marveling for the thousandth time that day at the feeling she got . . . the warmth, swelling up and filling her chest like hot cotton . . . every time one of them smiled at her, these strange, enormous children who looked in on her from the outside world.

Much like the shock of finding out that she existed, the shock of game-play had worn off rapidly . . . as soon as she saw the flashing red light mounted on the wall in the upper corner of her studio, she discovered that she knew it was a quarter-alert, and that she must quickly pick up her painting tools and get into position. As soon as the player screen zoomed in and she found herself face to face with a giant, the stupefying shock hit her like a bolt of lightning - instantaneous, surreal, blindingly powerful, and then gone, in a fraction of a second . . . and she knew exactly what to do. She barely blinked when the floating buttons and pieces of different puzzle games materialized before her eyes, hovering between her and the glass screen. She went through the motions of game-play as easily and expertly as if she'd been doing it all her life . . . _which, well, in a sense, she sort of had . . . _and now, at the end of the day, the only thing that still _truly _amazed her was the sensation of euphoric joy, the absolutely completeness of being that she felt brimming up inside of her every time one of the children smiled at her.

In fact, only one thing had occurred throughout the entire first day of gaming for which she had _not _been prepared.

_The arcade had only been open for about an hour, but already she had lost track of how many games she had played. The quarter alert had sounded, and she had sprung to the ready, grinning expectantly as the game screen extended out from the wall, inching towards her, the eager face of the shaggy-haired boy looking through it drawing closer and closer to her . . . then, when she'd said her lines, and the boy moved his paintbrush controller to choose a game . . . . nothing happened._

_He made a slightly surprised face, then tried again._

_Nothing happened. There was a small noise as his controller passed over the floating game icon at her right, an electronic noise like a ripple of energy going over a virtual bump, and a tiny flare of blue light . . . then, nothing. The game icon didn't enlarge like it was supposed to, didn't break apart and transform into the pieces of the puzzle. It didn't do anything._

_Now appearing to be slightly angry, the boy swiped at another icon, at all of the different icons._

_Nothing happened._

_Her heart rocketed into her throat, and all at once, she was consumed with a blinding panic that she didn't fully understand. Nervously, she repeated her line, forcing herself to keep smiling at the boy, her mind racing frantically but turning up no answers._

_The boy grew visibly further and further irritated, swiping his brush over the mini-game icons over and over again, so that there was a constant, rhythmic repeat of the electronic fail-noise and the pinpricks of light . . . but no matter how many times he tried, the games refused to open. _

_A flash of blue letters appeared at the bottom of the screen. From her perspective, they were written backwards, but she could make them out, darting her eyes down carefully and inconspicuously at intervals. Her heart beat faster, a nervous sweat beginning to bead at the back of her neck._

_'Not connected to the web'? What did that mean? What was the '__**web**__'?_

_Helpless and frantic, she could do nothing but stand there and repeat her line, hoping against hope that something, __**anything**__, would happen._

_She watched as the old man she recognized from that morning . . . the first person to ever play her game, the person who shocked into her head the knowledge of what a human person was . . . Mr. Litwak, lean over the boy's shoulder and peer in through the window, studying her critically. They talked for a few moments about things she didn't understand, words she didn't recognize . . . internet, ethernet, web . . . but what she gathered from the snatches of conversation was that something was definitely wrong, and a vice of fear gripped her. It was all she could muster not to break character, fling herself against the glass, and shout desperately at Litwak and the children, "What's wrong? What did I do wrong?"_

_Litwak disappeared, and the boy and the others surrounding him stared disappointedly in at her, muttering things to each other._

_"Dumb thing busted the __**first day**__?"_

_"Figures it broke before I got a chance . . . "_

_" . . . think Litwak can fix it?"_

_" . . . don't get it . . . none of these games have an online option, why does it need a hook-up?"_

_She swallowed an audible sigh of relief when she caught a glimpse of Litwak returning, carrying something wrapped around his arm. It was blue, just like the flashes of electricity and the letters that were blinking . . . surely it was something to help her?_

_For a few agonizing minutes, she couldn't see anything . . . Litwak was out of sight somewhere, the children all stepped back from her in unison and were staring at something out of her periphery . . . for a moment, everywhere, there was silence._

_And then . . ._

_BBBBRRRRRZZZAAM!_

_From somewhere inside the game, she heard it . . . a dulled, booming sound, like a muted explosion combined with a burst of electricity similar to when she was first plugged in, but . . . different, somehow. Less tangible, less physical . . . almost like a seismic wave of pure sound and vibration, rippling out from some unknown point outside of her studio._

_Immediately after the sound, there was a blinding wave of flashes . . . the pinpoints of blue light, all of them blaring and glowing at once in a wash of particles across the entirety of her vision . . . they rolled over her once, like a tidal wave, and then vanished. She stood there, blinking, never letting the smile fade from her face, even while her mind was reeling. Suddenly, the blue letters at the bottom of the screen vanished, and she felt her spirits soar skyward in an instant burst of desperate hope._

_BID-A-LING! the game sang happily all around her, and she struggled to keep her breathing calm and even._

_"Select a mini-game!" she cried enthusiastically . . . then held her breath, and waited._

_Litwak and the boy reappeared outside the screen. Cautiously, the boy raised the brush, swiped it over a game icon, and . . ._

_"Huh!" Litwak said in surprise, his voice dulled and quieted through the glass. "That did the trick! Whaddaya know."_

_What? she was wanted to scream. What did the trick?_

_Instead, she gratefully swallowed her concern and breathed a huge sigh of relief, happily calling out the name of the mini-game as the correct puzzle pieces materialized before her._

_"Paint-ball Plinko!" she cried._

_"Sweet!" the boy answered, and she felt it again . . . the warm rush of feeling, the sheer, simple happiness budding up at the excited look on his face._

_She played the game, and she forgot about the blue lights._

Now, it was twilight. Outside her game screen, the arcade went abruptly darker as Litwak switched off the lights, the only illumination coming from the orange glow of the setting sun beaming through the large windows. She waited until she heard the ever-so-faint sound of metallic jingling that she recognized from very early that morning . . . the sound of Litwak's keys, clinking softly and distantly against glass and metal as he locked the front doors and left for the night.

For a moment, she stayed where she was, her arms stiff and her smile even stiffer, looking out into the empty world beyond her window. Slowly, uncertainly, she let her face relax, rolling her sore jaw and gradually lowering her arms. She set her painting tools down on the floor, and leaned closely against the game screen, pressing her hands and nose on the glass to look around.

From where she was, she could just see the glowing screens of a handful of other game consoles . . . other _games, _other _worlds. _Her mind veritably boggled at the idea, and yet she knew that it was true . . . out there, in the immeasurable vastness of the arcade, were other consoles, just like hers, each one containing an entirely different plane of existence. What were the others like? Were they all puzzle games? Did any of them have paint brushes? Were there other characters living in those games too, just like her? There had to be . . . so many consoles, so many games, there _had _to be people inside of them, too. Through her window, she could just barely make out shapes and figures moving on the screens of the other consoles, but the orange light streaming into the arcade shone off of them in a harsh glare, making them almost invisible in the blind whiteness . . . and by the time the light had dimmed enough for her to see the other screens clearly, they appeared to be empty, devoid of any movement or life.

As she stared, she found herself sighing, slowly letting her hands slide down off the glass. She took a few steps back from the screen, and as if in response, it shrunk down and began cranking back into its embedded position on the wall, the robot arm telescoping until it folded flatly back into place. She watched it until it was fully retracted, then let her shoulders slump slightly and turned to look back into the studio.

Perhaps it was because she'd never seen children before, never played with them or watched the expressions change on their faces . . . never interacted with another living thing, until that morning . . . but at that moment, as she looked back into the smallness of her own world, she realized, for the very first time . . . that she was completely alone in it.

There were no children on this side of the glass. There wasn't even a Mr. Litwak. There wasn't _anyone . . . _anyone except her.

She was all alone.

And she still didn't know what her own name was.

She knew enough to know that she _ought _to have a name . . . everything had a name: her game, her tools, the other consoles ( at least the ones that she could see ), the children, Mr. Litwak. She walked slowly around the room, gently running her fingers over the desk, the bookcase, the tubes of paint, the spare canvases, the scraping and washing and wiping tools, the rags, the pencils, the sheets of paper. _All _of these things had names, and she knew every one of them by heart, etched into the very make-up of her code. If all of that was so, then . . . why?

_Why didn't she know her own name?_

As she passed by one of the large windows in the fourth wall of her studio, looking out over a dense forest that ascended into snowy mountains far, far away in the opposite direction as the ocean, she suddenly realized something that broke her momentarily from her somber ponderings. The sky outside her studio . . . it was _getting darker._

Abruptly consumed with curiosity, she quickly slid open the large, horizontally-sliding window pane and leaned out, the light wind tossing the ends of her curly hair. Not only was the sky beginning to darken, swaths of orange and purple spreading like paint-strokes across the horizon of approaching twilight . . . but the _wind. _The wind was quieter, not as strong as it had been yesterday. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully at the changing sky, new words suddenly appearing in her data banks, followed quickly by all of their conceptual implications.

"Weather," she said out loud, gingerly lifting one arm and holding her hand out into the cool, evening air. "Time. Time is passing, and the weather is _changing."_

She lingered there at the window sill for another moment, eager for more distraction from her worrying thoughts about names and other consoles. She let her gaze wander the landscape at the front side of her building . . . the grass at the foot of the first story, the few little hills that rolled between her and the dense bank of trees, the little footpath that wound out from the front of her building. She looked closer at the footpath, suddenly wondering what it was there for. She had studied every inch of her studio, and found no way in or out of it except for the windows, which were far too high above the ground to jump from. She had simply assumed that her studio represented the programmed limits of her mobility, that she had never been meant to wander beyond its walls . . . but now, as she looked down at the unmistakable dirt path winding through the grass and stopping at the edge of the building just beyond the reach of her vision, she found herself wondering . . .

_Why is there a footpath, if I can never go outside?_

She followed it with her eyes for a few more seconds, growing more and more curious and dissatisfied with her inadequate understanding . . . when, abruptly, her gaze reached the end of it, just a little ways off from her building, and she stopped. She froze for a few seconds, blinking in surprise at what she saw sitting at the end of the footpath, set into the wall of trees looming up around it.

_How in the world had she missed that?_

It was a tunnel.

No, it was a _pair _of tunnels . . . it was a matching pair of two stone arches sitting side by side, built from rough boulders stacked in a half-ring over the ground, and surrounded by dense branches and shrubbery. The dirt footpath that led to her building wound into the mouth of the first arch, vanishing down its dark throat. The second arch simply sat there, opening onto the empty grass, with nothing inside of it but impenetrable darkness.

For a few seconds, she caught herself staring sharply into the second arch, strangely drawn to it by some unknown force, as if there were magnets behind her eyes, and they were pulling her gaze not only toward the tunnel, but down, deep, inside of and beneath it . . .

. . . and then, she saw the light.

It was tiny at first, just a dancing little ball of blue light appearing in the darkness of the tunnel's mouth, glowing and bobbing about in a sprightly little dance. Then, it began to grow steadily larger and larger, and brighter and brighter, until it had almost filled the arch and banished the edges of the darkness with it's brilliant, azure glow . . . . and then, as she watched, transfixed and gaping . . . the ball of light grew legs, and exploded out of the tunnel, shooting up toward the window she was looking through like a blue, electric rocket.

She didn't have time to blink, didn't have time to _think,_ before she was thrown back into the room, flying away from the window with terrible force, knocking over her easel and chair and slamming flat on her back into the far wall. The force of the impact rattled the books and clay pots in the bookcase, and she fell painfully to her hands and knees on the hard wooden floor, coughing and gasping for breath.

Her eyes watering and her mind reeling, she looked up . . . and there it was. Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to speak, but could find no words. She simply stared at it in speechless, incredulous shock.

She had absolutely no idea what it was. It was the first thing to appear in her world that she didn't recognize within seconds of looking at it . . . and the longer she stared, the less she understood. The only thing she was immediately sure of was that it was _alive . . . _it quivered and twitched, shivering with rippling waves of electricity surging around the exterior of its entire body, and it was uttering horrible, garbled sounds, like a living cry mashed together out of scrambled radio transmissions and piercing static. Its legs . . . it had _nine_ of them, long, thin legs like the legs of an insect, but without bones, without any structure. The legs wavered and hummed underneath the glowing blue orb of the body, holding it up like curling streaks of lightning as it staggered its way across the floor. It filled nearly an entire corner of the room, lighting up the entire studio with its eerie, blue glow.

She froze, trembling with horror, as it . . . the _thing . . ._ emitted a high-pitched, garbled shriek, and began crawling rapidly towards her.

She sat there, kneeling on the floor and staring like a deer in headlights at the indescribable creature for a single second that felt like an eternity . . . then, snapping out of the trance with a stab of sheer panic and terror, she leapt to her feet and bolted to the left wall of the room, running blindly to wherever the monster _wasn't. _It crashed clumsily into the corner where she had been, screaming angrily and stumbling around to right itself. She ran to the fourth wall, remembering with a sudden and terrible jolt that there _was no way out of the studio._

She thought for a split-second about jumping out one of the windows, but before she could even reach out to open the sill, the thing was upon her again. She spun around just in time to see its face. . . could you even _call _that a face? . . . three jagged holes of darkness in the glowing orb of it's body, twisted in what looked like a snarl of rage as it charged her. She held her arms out to shield herself, and her scream was cut short by a paralyzing electric shock as the monster fell upon her, knocking her to the floor.

The only thing she had time to register as it crashed down on top of her was that the monster had no skin, no solid exterior she could touch. Her outstretched hands seemed to melt into the creature as it landed on her . . . she felt nothing except a sudden, consuming heat and the waves of electricity coursing through her body. Everything around her went white . . . a claustrophobic, swallowing whiteness that clouded not only her eyes, but her ears as well . . . and for one jarring, agonizingly slow moment, she was completely blind and deaf, groping the air in front of her but finding nothing to hold onto. The heat and the electric shock grew doubly intense, seeming to concentrate in a smaller and smaller point of impact directly over her chest, until all she could feel was a sensation like a white-hot cannonball being driven straight into her heart. It pushed against her, harder and heavier and hotter until she was certain her entire being was going to be crushed into a singularity beneath the electric force . . . . and then, all at once, it was as if the cannonball evaporated in a burst of dissolving energy, sending a final shock wave resonating out of her and expanding through the room, knocking things off the shelves and then vanishing.

Sight and sound flooding back to her in a paralyzing torrent, her eyes shot open and she sucked in an enormous gasp, choking on the rush of oxygen and coughing violently. She was lying on the floor, curled up in a ball on her side, and as she slowly sat up, bracing herself on one arm and feeling her chest with the other, she was amazed to discover that with the exception of her senses rushing back to her at once in one overwhelming pulse, making her ears ring and her eyes water profusely . . . . she was _fine._

She took a few deep, steadying breaths, smearing the salt water from her eyes with one hand as she slowly sat up straight. She immediately tossed her head back and forth, searching the room from one end to the other. The shock wave had broken several things sitting on the shelves and knocked some pictures from the walls, but apart from herself . . . the room was empty again. She fisted one hand fearfully over her chest, her heart pounding so hard it was all she could hear. Breathing heavily, she pushed her back up against the wall and pulled her knees up to her chest, curling into as small a ball as possible and hugging herself tightly. Her eyes darted continuously from corner to corner as she struggled to quell the hysterical fear twisting up inside of her.

The thing . . . _whatever _it was . . . appeared to have vanished without a trace, and once again her game was silent and peaceful. She began to tremble as she looked around, the shock of what had just happened rendering her almost incoherent.

All she knew now was that she was alone . . . completely alone, once more.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It was one hour after closing time on Wednesday evening . . . a full forty-_nine _hours after Masterwork had been plugged in. The surge protector was _still _standing outside the entrance to the game, guarding it like a dog guarding a bone. The title screen was still displaying the red-lettered message, _"Game closed while calibrating."_

Ralph sat alone on a courtesy bench in the middle of the station straight across from the Masterwork gate. He was staring unflinchingly up at the title screen, almost without blinking. He was hunched forward anxiously, his hands clasped in front of him and his thumbs twiddling nervously, continually, as he waited.

At the far end of the station, the seconds ticked by in huge red numbers on the digital countdown clock . . . slowly, as if time was deliberately dragging its feet.

The surge protector had noticed Ralph sitting there waiting, and was pinning him with a wary, continual glare. Ralph barely noticed. His eyes widened even further as he stared intensely up at the Masterwork title screen. He wasn't sure how much longer he sat there for, not moving a muscle . . . . . the loud, throbbing pound of his own heartbeat the only sound that reached his ears.

And then, suddenly and quietly, there was a distant _bing, bing! _echoing through the station from the PA system, and the calm, disembodied voice spoke out.

"Attention, characters. Game console _Masterwork _is now open to public transit. Please observe all safety regulations while traveling between games. Thank you, and have a nice day!"

Ralph was up and running by the word _"open." _Before the announcer had completed the short speech, he was already standing outside the Masterwork gate, looking straight down at the startled surge protector with an unapologetic stare.

Regaining his composure, the SP bristled for a few seconds, fuming as if trying to think of some way to forbid Ralph from entering the game . . . then, after a moment, he heaved a heavy exhale, deflating and visibly giving up. He slowly, begrudgingly stepped aside.

"You just better _watch yourself, _mister," he pointed up at Ralph, squinting one eye and trying to sound menacing. "One more _toe _out of line, and so help me, I'll suspend your transit privileges! Got that, _tough guy?"_

Ralph didn't even turn to acknowledge him, barely hearing a word he said. He was standing perfectly straight and stock still, his fists clenched at his sides as he stared forward into the game portal, the tunnel darkening into ominous blackness at the end of his vision.

His heart in his mouth and his stomach in knots, Ralph closed his eyes for a brief moment and tightened his fists, squeezing them so hard they almost creaked audibly, like leather.

_You just have to be brave. _

_People can surprise you._

_You are one terrific bad guy._

_You just have to be __**brave enough **__to look again._

_Just one, more, time . . . ._

_. . . . look again._

Ralph swallowed loudly, pushing every last nagging scrap of doubt as deep down as he could force it, and pulling up as much courage as he had left within him.

Then he opened his eyes, looked up, and walked through the gate.

A/N: I realize that this story is now ten chapters in, and Ralph still hasn't met the love interest. I apologize for this, and I promise that in the next chapter, they are going to have one epic introduction. I'm also going to try and be more economic with this story's pacing from now on. Reviews make me smile!


	12. Chapter 11: Something In the Air

A/N: Yeah.

I'm not gonna lie, guys. I'm _really _excited about this chapter. Seriously, I couldn't stop until it was finished. If you guys have half as much fun reading it as I had writing it, you're in for a treat. Hope you like it, let me know what you guys think!

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 11: Something in the Air_

Like some of the other games in the arcade, there was no shuttle into Masterwork. The station portal opened directly into the mouth of the long, winding cord tunnel, the walls and ceiling lined with copper wiring and the floor with semi-firm electrical plastic.

_Unlike _the other games in the arcade, however . . . there were no floor-lights, no LED strips, no sunken bulbs to mark out the footpath. There were no lights _at all_. The Masterwork tunnel was completely dark, almost too dark for Ralph to see where he was going as he made his way through it. After a minute of impatient squinting and waiting for his eyes to adjust, he gave in and slowed down, walking with his arms held out cautiously in front of him, starting and bumping into the walls every time the tunnel banked gradually. His voice and the continual shuffling sound of his bare feet echoed in the lonely passage.

The further Ralph went into the tunnel, the further the steeled sense of determination that he had spent the entire day fortifying seemed to dissolve, giving way to the slowly enclosing edges of nerves and uncertainty. It was only his deliberate, bullheaded stubbornness that kept him moving slowly forward through the near total blackness - that, along with his inward, unshakeable conviction that no matter what happened, he _must _find out what kind of bizarre spell it was that the Masterwork girl had put on him . . . he simply _had to, _or he might never have another moment's peace of mind. He forced himself to concentrate on Vanellope's last words to him, and slowly, but steadily - inch by dark, shuffling inch - they pushed him onward.

_"No matter what happens . . . the important thing is for you to __**try**__."_

Finally, after what seemed like hours of near-blind stumbling ( but was in reality less than fifteen minutes ), he felt his way around a sharp corner, and all at once Ralph found himself blinking in a sudden wash of pale, gray light. He came to a startled halt, shaking his head and grunting softly as he waited for the spots to fade from his eyes. He blinked a few more times, then made his way forward to the end of the tunnel.

As soon as his eyes adjusted to the abrupt change, he discovered that the light filtering in through the round opening was not as bright as it had first seemed . . . not very bright at all, in fact, little more than a watery filter of gray revealing only blurred outlines of the game through the mouth of the tunnel. With a final deep breath and a thick, heavy swallow to steady his nerves, Ralph fazed through the portal and took his first step into Masterwork.

_Thum, thum._

He planted both feet firmly on the ground inside the game, then paused. He realized abruptly that he had squeezed both eyes shut and tensed his shoulders up, as if preparing for a physical blow. Feeling sheepish, but also still wrought with nerves and excitement, he opened one of his eyes, squinting downward.

He was looking at his feet. They were planted in a patch of loose, brown dirt, sinking slightly into the ground. He wriggled his toes. He opened both eyes, and blinked. He was standing on a narrow footpath, winding through a large bank of thick, overgrown grass.

Ralph looked up, and his heart began to beat even faster. He clenched both fists, taking deep breaths and struggling fiercely to keep calm as he rapidly took in the sprawling immediacy of the Masterwork landscape.

The game was large.

_Very _large.

And yet, at first glance, there appeared to be remarkably little _in _it. Spreading out in front of him was a long stretch of grassy hills that seemed to continue on straight ahead into infinity. To the left of the grass was a white-sanded beach scattered with black, jagged boulders of all sizes, and to the left of that was a dark, ink-blue ocean that extended off to the very edge of the horizon. Restless waves were crashing against the beach in a continual rhythm, filling the chilly air with the ever-present sound of their dull, pulsing roar. To the right of the grass was a sharp, uphill bank culminating in what looked like a veritable wall of forest, the thick trunks and branches growing up so tightly together that they almost looked impenetrable. The forest sloped higher and higher for at least half a mile, where it was then interrupted by the sharp, upward thrust of a craggy, snow-capped mountain range.

For a full minute, Ralph let himself gape silently at the rugged, majestic terrain, his mind grappling with the immensity of it. The game looked at least as big as Sugar Rush or Hero's Duty, possibly even bigger . . . but it wasn't just the distance of the horizon line, it was something else . . . something indefinite, something not quite identifiable. The sky seemed _higher, _somehow, diffuse and invisible . . . as if it really did continue on forever, without any ceiling at all . . . unlike Fix-It Felix and countless other games, whose ceilings were so close and solid, you could practically hit them with a rock if you threw hard enough.

As Ralph was standing there, an unexpected gust of wind rushed past him, chilling the bare skin of his arms and making him shudder . . . and with that one sensation, he suddenly realized what it was about the game that made it feel so immense and detached. It was the _air . . . _the atmosphere in the game was not only cold and damp, but it was actually _changing _as he stood there. The winds were shifting all around him, blowing first lightly, then strongly, then lightly again, whispering in and out as if they were alive. The sky overhead was dark and overcast, washes of pale light just managing to filter through the heavy patches of blue and gray, and all around him the cool air was growing thicker and heavier with rising humidity.

This game had _weather_. He could feel it, as surely as he could feel the cool dirt beneath his feet . . . Ralph had _never _heard of, let alone _been to_, an arcade game that had actual, _changing _weather. Sure, there were games that had different weather in different _levels, _different sections of the world . . . Sugar Rush, for example, had mountains where it snowed ice cream right next to valleys where the sun was shining hot enough to bake blistering cracks in a peanut brittle desert. But the weather in other games was always constant, _always _strictly isolated to its programmed area; the ice cream mountains never melted, clouds never shaded the peanut brittle desert. But _here . . . _the weather was literally changing before his eyes, shifting and scattering in random patterns over the entire game as far as the eye could see. He hadn't been there five minutes, and already it was darker than when he arrived . . . just a moment ago, the struggling gray sunlight had been shining brighter over the mountains, and now it had moved over the ocean. The wind changed direction every thirty seconds. It was like no place he had ever been before.

Ralph slowly began to walk down the footpath, his head turning to look around him in every direction as he went. Another gust of wind sent goose-bumps prickling down his arms, and he began rubbing his hands over them as he walked, shivering aloud. The further he went, the more he began to get a very strange feeling about the new game. A heavy pit was starting to grow in the bottom of his stomach as his feet absently followed the gradual curve of the path.

"What kind of whacko game _is_ this, anyway?" he found himself muttering out loud, narrowing his eyes in confusion as he looked around. "Where's the room, where's the _studio_? Where's the . . . the . . . "

All of a sudden, he stopped, the word _girl _catching in his throat as his feet froze on the path. In the blink of an eye, just as he had turned to face the ocean straight on, it appeared, flashing once in a shaky, faltering image plane, then planting there, firm and huge and solid, as plainly as if it had been there the whole time. Ralph stared up at it, his eyes widening and his hands slowly falling back down to his sides. It was a building . . . a building that had most definitely_ not_ been there when he entered, that had appeared like a mirage the moment he came to the last bend in the footpath . . . a tall, perfectly square building, three stories high with a dark, steeply pitched roof, with walls of yellow brick and a single red chimney creeping up the side, with no smoke curling out of it. The dirt footpath he was standing on led straight up to the bright red front door, and next to the front stoop there was a lonely mailbox mounted on a pole. A ring of bushes hemmed around the foundation, and there were windows set around the perimeter of each story, but the first and third floors were completely dark. Only the second story windows were lit up, standing out in the swiftly darkening gray air with a bright yellow glow. Immediately behind the house lay the endless expanse of the ocean, so close that the waves practically lapped up at the edges of the foundation. Far away on the horizon, the sun was setting over the water, illuminating a thin line of blazing orange between the dark water and the gloomy sky. Not only did this game have weather . . . it also appeared to have _time_, real, passing time marked with a moving sun.

But Ralph was too preoccupied with the sudden appearance of the house to pay much attention to the waning sunset. He stared at it uncertainly for a few minutes, turning his head to study it at different angles. He took several steps to the right, then to the left, shuffling his feet through the thick grass and looking to see if it appeared as solid from the sides as it did from the front. The brick building just sat there quietly, evidently real and solid from every angle. Scrunching one half of his face perplexedly, Ralph took a few steps backwards, keeping his eyes trained on the house . . . and then, when he'd gone back about ten paces, _blip! _He started abruptly, jolting with surprise when the house instantly vanished again, and he was left staring at an empty beach.

Ralph's brow lowered into a flat, blunt line. He took one step forward, and flinched only slightly when the house reappeared. He took a step back. Vanished. He took a step forward. Reappeared. He took a step back. Vanished.

"What in the _heck_ . . . ?" he muttered under his breath, scratching his head and taking a final step forward, watching curiously as the building once more popped into view.

Evidently, there was some kind of code radius circling around the house . . . a perimeter, inside of which the house was visible, and outside of which it wasn't. The question was, _why? _Was it part of the game? Was it a glitch, or some kind of code disruption? Had forty-nine hours not been long enough for the new game to calibrate?

Stumped and increasingly curious, Ralph took a few more steps forward, drawing nearer to the front stoop of the brick structure and scanning it with his eyes, lifting his gaze up to the bright second story windows. He couldn't see anything through them but the wooden rafters of a brightly lit ceiling . . . that _had _to be the studio, which meant _the girl must be inside _. . .

Slowly, anxiously - his nerves quickly twisting back up as soon as he remembered his reason for being in the strange game in the first place - Ralph closed the remaining gap between himself and the house, pausing at the point where the footpath terminated in a single stone step at the front door. Timidly, half expecting to faze through it like a hologram, Ralph lifted his foot and nudged the stoop once with his big toe . . . then nudged it again, then slowly, cautiously flattened his foot on it. It certainly _felt _solid. Ralph let out a faintly relieved exhale, then lifted his gaze to the closed red door in front of him.

_This was it. It was now, or never._

His heart pounding harder than ever . . . so hard that he barely noticed as the next gust of cold, bristling wind rushed past him, setting his teeth on edge . . . Ralph stepped up onto the stoop, squaring his shoulders and looking down at the quaint, rustic wooden door whose lintel was almost two feet too low for him. He took a long, deep breath, closed his eyes, and slowly let it out.

"Well . . . _here goes nothing."_

Slowly, taking extreme care not to use too much force, Ralph raised his fist, hesitated for one last, fleeting instant . . . and knocked.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_BUNK, BUNK, BUNK._

It wasn't a loud noise. It was dull and half muted, and seemed to vibrate through the floor more than the air . . . in fact, she almost felt it more than she heard it.

It was a loud noise, but the instant it sounded . . . disrupting the previous hour of near dead silence without the slightest warning . . . she screamed, and started so violently that she toppled straight off the chair, smearing a thick streak of blue across the canvas she'd been working on as she fell to the floor with a hard, painful _thump._

Panic instantly seizing her, ignoring the ache in her right side, she scrambled frantically to her feet and darted like a rabbit to the other side of the chair, crouching behind it and wrenching her longest, thickest paintbrush out of her smock in the blink of an eye, pointing it like a weapon towards the southeast window of her studio.

Her chest was already heaving with gasping, panic breaths, her heart rocketing into her mouth the moment she heard the strange noise. She stared at the window, wide-eyed and panting, for a full thirty seconds of silence and stillness.

Then, the sound came again.

_BUNK, BUNK, BUNK._

"AaaaAAHH!" she yelped out loud, jumping again and clumsily grasping the chair back for support. She whirled around in a circle, pointing her paintbrush toward each window in turn as she searched for the source of the noise.

_The last twenty-four hours had dragged by in a surreal, frantic blur. Last night, hours after it had happened . . . after __**it**__, the monster, the __**thing**__, had vanished . . . after she had finally managed to calm down enough to stand up and breathe normally, she had made a mad dash around her studio, slamming all the windows shut and locking them. Then, gripping her most substantial paintbrush - the one that was over two feet long, with a heavy walnut handle and bristles that left behind a four-inch wide stroke - and holding it raised and ready over her head, she searched every last nook and cranny of her studio, opening cabinets, overturning side-tables, throwing things off the shelves. She searched and searched until she had inspected every inch of the solitary room . . . and she had found nothing, not a single trace of the creature anywhere. She spent the rest of her night perched on her chair in the center of the room, eyes darting continually and the slightest creak of the wind against the windows making her jump. She sat there . . . too frightened to close her eyes, even for a moment . . . until the sun came up, and from outside the game screen she heard the sound of Litwak opening the front doors._

_She had done her best to go through the motions of game-play like nothing was wrong. Mercifully, the arcade wasn't as crowded that day as it had been the previous two . . . it was noon before she had her first quarter alert. It was all she could do not to scream with panic and hide under her desk when the alarm went off._

_After the first few minutes of nervous shaking wore off, she managed to get into the rhythm of the game and push the horror of the previous night's episode from her mind. Her first game of the day went off relatively without a hitch, as did her second, third, fourth, and even fifth. It wasn't until the middle of the afternoon, when a smiling, eager-faced girl with blonde hair and glasses had dropped in the fifteenth quarter of the day that something had happened._

_It started with a single jolt . . . like a tiny, lightning fast pinprick of heat and energy puncturing through the tip of her finger, when she was right in the middle of a round of Maze-master. She was watching the gamer excitedly trace through the maze on the screen with a line of hot pink paint, waiting to say her congratulatory line when she reached the end, when suddenly . . . out of nowhere . . . she felt it, a quick stab of burning heat, as if she'd touched the tip of her index finger to a red-hot surface. Her smile flickered, thankfully part-hidden behind the walls of the maze. She shot a quick, frightened glance down at her hand, but the pain vanished as quickly as it appeared. _

_It happened again, two games later. She was playing Battle-Strokes against a teenage boy when suddenly, she felt as if her hands were on fire, crackles of blue electricity pulsing from her fingertips and lingering for a few seconds in the air, curling around her hands and then dissipating with a whiff of ozone. She cringed visibly, struggling to continue playing the game as if nothing was wrong. From that moment until the arcade finally closed hours later, she was biting back flinches and grimaces every thirty seconds as her hands seemed to fill with surges of electricity, ebbing and pulsing in and out, as if traveling in a circuitous loop up and down her arms. The pain grew gradually less intense with each surge, until she felt nothing more than a jarring swell of heat and faint tingling through the skin . . . but every time the flashes of blue lightning flared in instantaneous crackles, then disappeared, she felt a strange pull . . . a force, a bodiless entity pushing and pulling her entire being in one direction, like magnetism. It wasn't strong enough to physically move her, but it was a continual struggle not to give in to it and let herself leap off in the direction it was pulling. As she stood at the game screen facing outward, it seemed to be drawing her forward and to the left, toward some unseen point outside, beyond the shoulder of the gamer. The more she fought against it, the more persistently it seemed to propel her, like a powerful tide, gradually coaxing her further and further into the open ocean._

_She was relieved when Litwak finally made the call for last game._

_Then, without any explanation, as soon as the arcade was dark, the doors were locked, and she had moved away from the game screen, the electric pulses slowed, then lessened, then stopped altogether. She had collapsed down at her easel - exhausted from the combination of a sleepless night, the grueling stress of the baffling electrical pulses, and her constant, lingering fear from the monster's inexplicable attack - and sat there, perfectly still, for a long time, staring straight ahead at nothing. She tried to get a grip on what was going on, tried to come up with an explanation for what had happened, for what __**was happening **__. . . for whatever it was that had attacked her . . . but the harder she tried, the less sense everything seemed to make. Finally, after almost an hour of hopeless confusion, she gave up. She stacked her easel with a fresh canvas, assembled her supplies on a small table next to her chair, and tried to paint . . . tried to fill her mind with the necessities of the creative process, with color blending and texture and the consistency of the oils. And for a few, precious minutes, it was almost beginning to work._

_Then, she had heard the noise._

_**BUNK, BUNK, BUNK!**_

It sounded for a third time, louder and harder than before. It reverberated through the floor of her studio like a vibrating ripple, coursing up through the wood and into the soles of her feet.

In the midst of her steadily mounting fear, she stopped for a moment, lowering her brandished paintbrush ever so slightly and looking down at the wooden floor where she stood. She stared at them for a moment, her eyes narrowing as it gradually dawned on her that the sound was not coming from outside the windows . . . . _it was coming from_ _under the floorboards. _

The instant after this revelation dawned on her, she gasped out loud and fisted one hand in the neck of her smock, almost dropping her paintbrush as an intense pulse suddenly pushed her from inside, like a single heartbeat pounding the wall of her chest with ten times its normal strength. Her knees shook faintly as she struggled to stand up straight, all at once overcome with the same invisible, inexplicable force she had felt earlier, but this time compelling her _down, _as if trying to draw her straight through the floor itself.

Outside, the sky was growing steadily darker and darker as the sun finished setting and the angry storm clouds which had been gathering steadily for the past hour began to swell into a thunderhead. Every few moments a gust of wind rattled the tightly shut glass window panes, and off in the distance she thought she heard a faint, soft rumbling.

Twenty seconds passed, and now the pull on her body was so strong she almost bent forward under its power. Still gripping her paintbrush weapon, with tiny beads of sweat beginning to glisten along her hairline, she darted her eyes rapidly around the floor of the studio, her heart hammering and a kind of helpless desperation taking hold of her.

This . . . invisible hand, this _force_**, **that was pressing against her . . . whatever it was, it was compelling her to go down, down below the floor, into _. . . __**whatever **__was down there, she had no idea . . . _but how? There was nothing, no opening in the floor, no possible way for her to . . .

_**BUNK BUNK BUNK BUNK!**_

A fourth time it came, louder than any of the others thus far, the whole room seeming to vibrate around her with each hammering blow of whatever was causing it . . . and there, in the corner of her eye, at the very edge of the round Persian rug lying in the middle of the room, a jolt of movement caught her attention.

Dropping to her hands and knees . . . her breath failing for just an instant at the abrupt, passing sensation of relief in her chest when she drew closer to the floor, as if the compelling force inside of her was momentarily pleased at the progress . . . she crawled on all fours to the edge of the rug and flipped it aside, shoving her chair out of the way to make room to fold it over. She peered anxiously down at the spot where seconds earlier she swore she had seen something move . . . a tiny, nearly imperceptible vibration out of sync with the rest of the floor, like a loose board, or a disconnected section, or . . .

. . . _or a trap door!_

All at once, it fazed into her vision, appearing to her so clearly she wondered how on earth she hadn't spotted it immediately. It was a wide, square section cut into the middle of the floor, just a thin, dark line of separation, hidden beneath the Persian rug . . . but it was _there,_ there was no mistaking it. Her hands trembling with a combination of wild excitement and mounting dread at what she might find underneath the only world she had known until that point . . . at what the strange, irresistible force might be _pushing her towards . . . _she dug her fingertips into the crack, wriggled them into as deep a purchase as she could get, and _pulled. _

The trap door was lighter than she had expected, lifting up in her small hands with relative ease. It flipped to an upright position, angled perpendicularly to the floor, then would go no further, the hinges concealed on the underside of the floorboards.

Her breath caught in her throat as she looked eagerly down through the hatch and found herself staring into complete darkness.

She swallowed thickly, her mouth suddenly dry. She tried to inch slowly away from the opening, but even as her mind railed furiously against the prospect of dropping down into the unknown blackness, the invisible hand said otherwise. A second, powerful jolt hammered the inside of her chest, pushing her back toward the whole, and she knew she had no choice. Summoning as much courage as she could muster and once more seizing hold of her paintbrush, clutching it fearfully to her chest, she took a deep breath, sat down at the edge of the trap door, and swung her legs in.

Almost immediately, her bare feet struck down on something thin and hard and solid. She opened her eyes, blinking into the darkness. She leaned over closer and discovered that her feet were resting on the top rung of a ladder that descended vertically down into the shadow, fading from view after four steps. Taking another deep breath, without waiting for her fear to resurface, she determinedly stuck the paintbrush into her mouth, clamping down on the wooden handle with her teeth, and swung herself into the hole.

She latched onto the ladder with her hands and feet as the darkness swiftly eclipsed her, the light from the room she'd just left shining above her in a bright square. Helplessly obeying the pull of the invisible hand, she began climbing backwards down the wooden ladder, steadily descending rung by rung, further and further into the blackness.

As she went, she could hear the slowly approaching rumble of thunder outside the walls of the building, growing steadily louder with each peal. The air around her was chilly and thin, her breath rushing audibly in and out through her nose as she bit down harder and harder on the paintbrush handle. The bright square of the trap door was high above her head now, the darkness surrounding her on all sides.

She took one more step downward, and suddenly her foot hit something solid and flat. She yelped slightly with surprise, the sound muted behind the paintbrush handle. Her hands fumbled on the rung of the ladder and she slipped down, landing flat on the soles of both feet with a staggering jolt.

The second her feet made contact with the floor, lights flared to life all around her, rapidly dilating her pupils and making her blink repeatedly. When her vision cleared again and she found herself again on steady ground, she took the paintbrush out of her mouth and looked up. Her eyes widened and her lips parted, her mouth working soundlessly in shock as her gazed trolled slowly around the now visible space.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_BUNK, BUNK, BUNK._

_Ralph cringed automatically after knocking three times on the red door, quickly drawing his fist back and wincing as the wood rattled and shook on its hinges._

_"Careful . . . __**careful,**__" he whispered to himself, inching a step back from the door and straightening up, schooling his features into a calm smile._

_He waited._

_And waited._

_A minute passed, and the first floor windows remained dark, with no sound or movement from within. An instant knot of discouragement threatened to twist up in the pit of his gut, but he quickly steeled his brow and forbid it from forming. He reached forward and tapped the door with his knuckles again._

_BUNK, BUNK, BUNK._

_Again, he stood back and waited, hands clasped together patiently in front of him. He glanced upward once at the sky, shifting uncomfortably on his feet as the clouds rolling by seemed to grow darker and darker._

_He waited._

_And waited._

_And waited. Another full minute went by, and still there was nothing. _

_A tiny flare of panic sparked inside him, and he knocked a third time, this time harder and louder than before, not caring when the door shook under each blow._

_**BUNK, BUNK, BUNK!**_

_Thirty seconds passed with no response from inside the house, and the flare of panic suddenly grew into a flame. He shook his head once and began muttering nervously to himself, not wanting to believe the nagging voices of failure already popping up in his head._

_"No . . . no, no, no . . . ."_

_**BUNK BUNK BUNK BUNK!**_

_This time, after the last pound he held his fist closed against the door, slumping forward in defeat and staring into the red-painted wood grain. Somewhere off in the distance, he heard the faint rumbling of approaching thunder._

_A sick, sour feeling had abruptly taken hold of him, as if his insides had turned to water. Slowly, his head still shaking, still not wanting to believe it, but slowly giving in to the growing certainty of what he feared, he turned around, letting his fist slide down the door, and sat down on the stone step with a heavy __**thud.**_

_The thunder began to grow louder and closer, the wind picking up around him and the sky turning nearly black. It was going to storm any second . . . but he wasn't looking up, wasn't paying any attention to the weather. He was staring down at the space between his feet, lifting up his hands to run them over either side of his head. He tried to stay calm, tried to be rational._

_Okay, so she wasn't answering the door._

_So what? There could be a hundred reasons why she wouldn't answer the door. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe she was listening to music, or . . . or in the shower, somewhere where she couldn't hear him . . . maybe she was busy, maybe she already had company. Maybe she had gone out, maybe she wasn't even in the house . . ._

_Maybe . . . maybe . . ._

_. . . maybe . . . she had peeped out through the window . . . taken one look at him, and . . ._

_"No!" he said out loud, surprising himself with the angry tone of his own voice. He stood up, growling with frustration and pacing a few steps up and down the footpath, planting his hands on his hips as he began to war internally with himself._

_**Go. **__Just turn around right now, and leave._

_NO. I did not come this far just to chicken out now._

_Why are you kidding yourself? There are lights on. She's __**in **__there. If she had __**any **__interest in talking to you at all, she would have __**answered **__by now._

_I __**can't **__give up. I __**have **__to know what she did to me, I __**have **__to . . ._

_He stopped pacing, turning back to face the house and clenching his fists determinedly._

_"I __**have **__to," he said out loud, narrowing his gaze fiercely at the door, preparing to walk straight back up to it and pound on it all night, if that was what it would take to make her come down . . . when suddenly - appearing like magic before his eyes - there were lights in the first floor windows._

_He drew in a sharp breath of surprise and happiness, his eyes widening and his heart leaping into his mouth. Without thinking, caught up in a swell of blind elation, he ran back to the door, jumped onto the stoop and pounded it so hard the hinges creaked._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

She was standing in another room, the same size and dimensions as her studio, and lit with the same warm, glowing lamplight . . . but instead of art supplies, it was filled objects and furniture the likes of which she hadn't yet seen. Some of the things she instantly recognized as being odd variations of her own possessions upstairs . . . on one side of the room, next to a row of windows looking out on the dark evening, there was a large, broad table, larger and broader than either her desk or any of the side-tables, with chairs pushed up to each of its four sides. On the opposite side of the room, there was a countertop similar to her work desk, stretching along the length of the entire wall . . . but set into it at intervals were strange, bulky instruments she couldn't immediately name, great square constructions of black metal with funny handles and knobs. The more she looked, the more objects she spotted that weren't yet registered in her vocabulary.

Only a single new word appeared in her mind as she looked around, and she stopped, standing up straight with her hands at her sides as she muttered it out loud.

"This . . . this is a . . . . _kitchen."_

She blinked.

"I . . . . I have a _kitchen?"_

_**BUNK BUNK BUNK BUNK BUNK!**_

The sound, ten times louder and closer than ever before, _banged _abruptly nearby, shocking her back to reality and making her yelp in frightened surprise. She immediately swiveled around in the direction the noise had come from, and found herself face to face with a red, wooden door, set into the east wall of the kitchen. She realized instantly that it was from this point that the frightening sound was originating, from here it had been banging and reverberating throughout the entirety of the house.

Whatever the invisible force inside of her had been pulling her to, compelling her helplessly towards . . . . _it was on the other side of that door._

A violent trembling suddenly seized her as the fearful memory of the blue monster replanted itself viciously in her mind, and she fought the panicking urge to bolt straight back up the ladder. She wouldn't have been able to, anyway . . . the pull in her chest was now so strong it was inching her physically toward the door, her feet yielding to it in tiny, frightened steps. She quickly raised the paintbrush in front of her again, gripping it with both hands and holding her arms stretched straight out toward the door. A single bead of sweat rolled down her temple, her whole body shaking with a horrible, hollow dread balling in the pit of her stomach.

As she drew up to it, she realized that there was a thin, horizontal crack running through the center of the door, dividing it into an upper and lower half. Slowly letting go of the paintbrush with one trembling hand, she reached out and closed her fingers around the handle on the upper half, recoiling slightly at the cold press of the metal in her hand.

For one agonizingly long second, she stood there paralyzed with fear, her mouth cotton dry and her chest heaving for breath as the invisible hand now pushed in her mind as well as her body, urging, _ordering _her, _open it, open it, open it, open it . . ._

_OPEN THE DOOR!_

KKRRAAABBOOOO_OOOMM!_

A deafening crash of thunder exploded outside, shaking the walls of the house, and in the midst of its earth-shattering roar she cried out, squeezed her eyes shut, and flung open the upper half of the door.

The Dutch door half banged into the interior wall with a splintering impact that was all but muted by the crash of thunder. A half second passed, and the peal quieted into a low, ominous rumble, and for another half second everything was dark and still.

With her teeth clenched as if bracing for a terrible impact, and the paintbrush thrust forward in her shaking arms like a sword . . . she slowly, fearfully, opened her eyes and looked up.

A pair of small, brown, round eyes blinked back at her.

For a split second, they stared blankly at each other.

Then, a piercing streak of lightning snaked down from the storm overhead and lit up the world outside with a blinding white flash . . . and her eyes widened, her jaw quivering with an instant seize of terror when she saw the enormous, hulking shape of the shadowy figure completely filling the doorway, a looming giant silhouetted in black against the momentary flash of the lightning.

She squeezed her eyes shut and _screamed _at the top of her lungs, a shrill scream of blind panic that was drowned out an instant later by another booming clap of thunder following the lightning strike.

Still screaming, she reared back, lifting the paintbrush high over her head, and with as much force as she could muster, swinging it in a slashing downward arch toward the monster.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph was darting excited glances toward the lit windows and shifting impatiently from foot to foot on the doorstep. He was just about to raise his fist and knock for a sixth time when suddenly, filling his field of vision with an instant, blinking burst of light, the top half of the door swung open into the house, and he practically jumped out of his skin.

He reeled blindly for a few seconds, his heart hammering at the bottom of his throat . . . then he quickly pulled himself together and looked down, hunching forward so he could peer beneath the low lintel of the door.

A pair of enormous green eyes looked back at him.

For one split second, he found himself standing face to face with the Masterwork girl, and the instant he laid eyes on her . . . _at long last, there she was, in the flesh, right there in front of him . . . _he felt time slow to a grinding halt, everything, even his pounding heartbeat, moving in slow motion as he stared at her.

Thrust straight out between them was a long, narrow stick that he quickly realized was a paintbrush nearly the length of the girl's arm. She was gripping it with both hands and holding it straight out in front of her like a weapon, she and it both trembling visibly. Her face was pale and drawn, her forehead glistening with sweat, clung to by flyaway ends of the curly, caramel-brown mane of hair that fell wildly over her shoulders. She was . . . _small, _smaller than he would have ever imagined from watching her from afar on her game screen. The top of her head barely reached the first button on the neck of his shirt, and her knees were shaking as if she might buckle under her own frail weight at any second. His inexpressible shock and elation at _finally _seeing her up close and face to face was suddenly, painfully deflated when he realized that the expression on her face wasn't just surprised . . . it was stunned. It was _terrified._

But before he could open his mouth, there was a blinding flash of lightning, followed by a clap of earthshaking thunder, and the next thing he knew the Masterwork girl was screaming at the top of her lungs and something had come flying up at his face, hitting him like a punch square in the eye.

_THWACK!_

"OOO_OOW_!" he shouted, a bolt of sparkling pain shooting through his eye and down the left half of his face, hitting him with enough force to make him stumble and lose his footing on the stoop, flailing and teetering dangerously backwards over the step for a few seconds before timbering flat on his back with a heavy _thud._

Ralph groaned loudly, stars still flashing behind his left eye as he rolled up onto one elbow and gingerly touched his fingertip to the skin beneath his eye, which was already starting to swell. He stopped, freezing with astonishment when he felt something tacky and wet under his finger. He pulled it away, squinted at it with his good eye, and saw a smear of thick, gummy blue paint staining his fingertip.

"_What, the . . . ?" _he muttered incredulously under his breath.

He propped himself up on both elbows, looking back up at the brightly lit square of open doorway and blinking in surprise when he saw that there was no one there. He climbed dizzily back onto his feet, swaying slightly as he crept back up to the stoop, craning his neck to try and see over the shut half of the door.

"He . . . _hello?"_

A pair of eyes, the top of a curly head, and the end of the paintbrush peeked quickly back at him over the edge of the door.

"STAY BACK!" a shrill, panicked voice shrieked out from behind the wooden door. Before he could answer, he saw the tip of the paintbrush rearing back for another strike.

Ralph's eyes bugged and he threw his hands defensively out in front of him.

"No, _wait a secon . . . . _OOOUU_UUUCH!" _

A thin, pale arm reached over the door and slashed the brush in a fierce, horizontal stroke, painting a thick streak of indigo in _midair, _as clearly as if it had been painted on a pane of glass_. _The blue line rolled rapidly out from the tip of the brush and cracked through the air like a whip, flying towards him and splattering in a painful stripe across his upheld forearms, smarting like the smack of a leather belt.

Ralph stumbled back on the dirt path again, but managed to keep his footing, wincing and sucking in air as he shook his arms out, trying to dispel the sharp sting of the brushstroke.

The eyes were peeking out at him again, wider and more frightened than ever.

"Y-you . . . you stay, s-stay _back, _or I'll. . . or I'll _hit you again!" _the girl's small, trembling voice struggled out from behind the door.

"NO!" Ralph shouted frantically, quickly shooting his hands up over his head in a gesture of surrender. "NO, _PLEASE! Please, _just . . . just hold on, hold on a second!"

Cautiously, ever so slowly, he crept an inch closer to the door. The second his foot moved forward the girl was on her feet, reaching both arms out over the bottom half of the door with her brush poised at the ready, her flashing eyes pinning him with a frightened, desperate stare as her hair fell over half of her face.

"Stay back! I _mean it!" _she cried, raising the brush higher, ready to strike.

Ralph froze, slowly lowering his hands to chest height, turning his palms down in an attempt to calm the situation.

"Whoa, whoa, _easy, _easy now!" he said quietly, taking another tiny, discrete step forward. "Everything's fine! I'm not going to _hurt you." _

For another tense, anxious moment, she simply stared at him, breathing quickly and silently with her arms and shoulders raised rigidly along with her weapon . . . then . . . after another moment, she slowly . . . _slowly, _ever so slightly, lowered the brush. Her shoulders relaxed a tiny fraction, a single glimmer of the blind terror fading from her pale expression.

"You . . . . you can talk," she whispered, suddenly staring at Ralph as if she were truly seeing him for the first time.

Their eyes met, and Ralph instantly fought down a hot blush that threatened to creep up his neck. He took another cautious step forward.

"It's o_kay_," he said calmly, inching closer and closer back to the stoop until he was standing in the light of the door again. "Everything is _okay."_

The moment he stepped fully into the light, the girl jumped visibly, blinking her eyes repeatedly and staring at him with an obvious wave of fresh amazement. He timidly lifted one foot onto the step and she yelped, fumbling fearfully with the brush for a second before thrusting it back out and pointing it straight between his eyes, her small arms reaching up at a sharp angle.

"DON'T! Don't come any closer!" she ordered, a note of hysteria tightening her voice.

Ralph froze, grimacing and leaning his head away from the brush, staring cross-eyed at the menacing bristles hovering inches from his face.

"Take it easy, _take it easy!" _he pleaded, eyeing the brush warily. "I _promise, _I'm _not going to - "_

_"Which tunnel did you come from?" _she cut him off sharply.

Ralph stopped, blinking quizzically and peering around the brush to study her expression.

"Which . . . what?"

"_WHICH TUNNEL DID YOU COME FROM?" _she demanded again, her voice rising to a hysterical screech.

His brow knitting in confusion, Ralph looked around for a moment.

"Uuumm . . . I, uh . . . "

His gaze wandered back down the footpath, and in a sudden flash of lightning, nestled in the dense forest a little ways off into the distance, he spotted the mouth of the game portal he had come through earlier . . . then started in surprise when he saw that there was a _second _tunnel, nearly identical, sitting just to the right of it, but without any path leading to it. He darted back to look at the Masterwork girl again, her grip tightening frantically on the handle of the brush.

" . . . the . . . . uh . . . . the one on the _left?" _he shrugged, wincing hopefully and lifting his hands higher.

KKAAKKAAABOO_OOOM!_

A peal of rippling thunder followed the lightning flash, and the next second, it was as if a floodgate in the sky had split open and poured down on the earth below in an explosive deluge. The rain that had been threatening for so long finally arrived all at once, pounding down in a ceaseless, near deafening cloudburst. Ralph was drenched in seconds, his hair plastering down over his forehead and almost covering his eyes. He blinked, squinting one eye hopefully at the girl and trying to smile in spite of the huge, heavy raindrops that continually pummeled the top of his head.

The girl's eyes drilled suspiciously into him a moment longer . . . then flashed once in the direction of the twin tunnels . . . then back at his face. As they watched each other through the pounding sheets of rain, something in her seemed to finally unwind, her frightened, defensive scowl slowly melting in a serious stare. Gradually, she lowered her now dripping arms, drawing them back in through the open half of the door and looking out at him from the warm square of light.

"What . . . what _are _you?" she asked abruptly, her small voice almost lost amidst the noise of the pounding downpour.

Ralph started, opening his mouth to answer, but finding no words. He had never been askedthat question before.

"I'm . . . well, I'm a _character. _Just like you," he gestured gently toward her with one hand. She eyed his movements skeptically, scanning him from head to toe with a critical gaze. Then she looked back up at his face . . . their eyes met again, and her look suddenly softened.

"Just . . . like me?" she repeated quietly, a sudden depth to her voice. Ralph felt the heat threatening in his face again.

They stared at each other wordlessly for another moment. When the girl spoke again, the last trace of mistrust was gone from her tone, replaced with a pleading sadness.

"Do you have a _name?" _she whispered, grasping the edge of the door with both hands and leaning forward against it, pinning him with a such look of hopeful desperation that it almost paralyzed him for a few seconds.

"Ah . . . y, yeah, I . . . I have a name."

Her eyes lit up even brighter. "You _do? What is it?"_

"It's . . . Ralph. Wreck-It Ralph."

She blinked slowly, her expression stunned with amazement.

"You have a _name," _she whispered to herself, as if it were one of the greatest revelations she'd ever heard. "_Ralph, Wreck-It Ralph."_

He swallowed akwardly, this time unable to keep the faint blush from blooming on his face.

"Er . . . no, it's . . . it's _just_ Wreck-It Ralph. But . . . you can just call me _Ralph,_ if . . . if you want to."

She looked back up at him, and for a split second he thought he saw the faintest glimmer of a smile pass over her mouth.

"_Ralph," _she repeated softly.

His blush darkened.

Ralph coughed, pushing the wet hair out of his eyes with one hand and searching frantically for something to say.

"Uh, yeah . . . Ralph. That's me. What's, ah, what's _your _name?"

The moment the words left his mouth, a strange shadow passed over her eyes, her whisper of a smile disappearing and looking instead as if she might actually tear up.

"I don't know," she answered, and the way she said it was almost heartbreaking.

Ralph blinked, half in stunned surprise and half in cringing regret at his unknowing mistake.

"You don't _know?" _he parroted blankly, unable to think of anything else say.

The girl shook her head sadly.

Ralph's heart wrenched at the pained expression on her face. He bit his lip, desperate to change the subject. He glanced around quickly, squinting through the rain, and his eyes fell again on the blurred, now almost indiscernible shapes of the twin tunnel openings.

"Hey," he said quietly, gently. The girl looked up at him. "Why . . . why did you ask what tunnel I came through? Where does the one on the right lead to?"

Instantly, the girls eyes widened and her face paled again. She took a few steps back from the door, shaking her head and suddenly trembling again. Ralph started, moving forward and hunching down to stick his head through the opening, resting his hands over the edge of the bottom half. The doorway was too narrow for his shoulders to fit through. The girl jumped slightly and inched another step back when he leaned in.

"Hey, hey, wait a minute!" he pleaded, trying to coax her back toward the door. "I didn't mean to scare you again! Please, I . . . I just . . . "

He trailed off, the words failing him as he looked helplessly at her frightened face.

"I - I don't know," she stammered, her voice shaking as she wrapped her arms around herself. "I don't know where they lead, I don't know what they're _for_. All . . . all I know is that . . . l-last night . . . out of the t . . . tunnel on the _right, _there was . . . _there was . . . "_

She hesitated, pulling back further.

"There was what?" Ralph urged her on anxiously, struggling to lean in further through the doorway. "There was _what?"_

"There . . . there was . . . "

And then, suddenly, in mid sentence, the girl froze. Her arms relaxed, then went limp, dropping calmly back to her sides. Her lips were parted in mid-speech, her eyes staring unblinkingly forward, her expression of terror replaced by an abrupt, total absence of emotion.

Ralph blinked.

"Hey. . . hey, are you okay?"

The girl didn't answer. She stared blankly forward for another few seconds, then twitched violently, her head jerking quickly to the side and a lightning fast glow of blue light rippling through her code. She twitched once more, then shook her head and blinked rapidly, as if she'd just awoken from a dream. She turned and noticed Ralph still standing with his head and hands crammed halfway through the door frame. He was staring at her, dumbfounded.

"Are you o_kay_?" he repeated.

The girl shook herself once more, lifting her hand and gently touching her temple with two fingers, making a strange face.

"Yes, I'm . . . I'm fine," she answered hollowly, staring intensely at a spot on the floor.

Ralph waited a moment, pleading eagerly at her with his eyes.

". . . _and?" _he urged, after she didn't say anything more. "Last night, out of the tunnel on the right, there _was . . . ?"_

She looked at him, and the astounded blankness on her face was so palpable that for an instant it almost seemed to silence the roar of the rain.

"I . . . I don't remember," she said.

Ralph stared at her, flabbergasted, from his awkward position in her doorframe. She stared back.

_What was wrong with this girl? What was wrong with this **game**?_

_What in the world was going on here?_

The questions seemed to circle round and round in his head until they melded together, their individual components fusing into one and then dissipating into a general atmosphere of confusion. For a full minute that felt like an hour, the only sound was the dull, continual pounding of the rain outside and the distant peals of grumbling thunder. For that long, warm moment, Ralph allowed himself to forget everything else and simply look at her, watching her, drinking in the immediacy of her presence. He narrowed his eyes at her, trying to comprehend what it was she had done to him two nights ago when he'd first seen her . . . what she was still doing to him _now . . . _but every flail of mental effort proved fruitless, crumbling under its own volition and melting away like snow in the warmth of wide, glistening eyes.

Then, after more than a minute of silence between them, she suddenly blinked and took a step toward him, and he came rocketing back down to reality, instantly flushing with mortification when he realized that he had actually wedged himself into her doorway and stood there, staring at her unabashedly for only heaven knew how long.

Ralph cleared his throat loudly and abruptly, shifting into panic mode and quickly looking away from her, struggling to free himself from the doorframe as she drew closer and closer towards him.

"WeeeEEELLL, I think I've bothered you long enough for today!" he said at an awkwardly loud volume, his voice stammering and cracking slightly. "It was nice meeting you, uh . . . um . . . _ma'am_, and, I . . . ah, I think I'll just go now, and. . . come back, some other time when you aren't so . . . er, that is, some time when you can . . . ah . . . "

Ralph grunted heavily between words, scrunching up his shoulders and trying frantically to squeeze back out of the doorway, but only succeeding in banging the back of his head against the lintel, cringing and muttering indistinguishably under his breath.

Slowly, without saying a word, the Masterwork girl inched quietly up to the door, turned the knob on the lower section, and pulled it open. Ralph's eyes shot open and he stifled a yelp as the door swung out from underneath him, dropping him clumsily to his hands and knees on the threshold. The floorboards creaked sharply with protest as he fell onto them, catching himself on his hands and shaking his head to dispel the quick swirl of dizziness.

Glowing bright red with embarrassment, Ralph looked up . . . and froze.

The girl was standing over him . . . just _barely _over him, even when he was crouched on the floor . . . all five and a half scrawny feet of her, looking down at him with soft, curious eyes and the closest thing to a smile that he had yet seen playing across her lips.

"It's . . . really raining out there," she muttered, so shyly and quietly he almost wasn't sure he heard her. "And . . . you're soaking wet."

Ralph watched speechlessly as she slowly extended her arm to him, holding out her thin, delicate hand for him to take hold of.

"Ralph," she said softly. "Would you . . . . would you like, to . . . to come inside?"


	13. Chapter 12: Before I Wave Goodbye

A/N: This. Chapter. Was SO MUCH HARDER TO WRITE THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE.

That's why it took a little longer than usual. But, on the upside, it's also even longer than the last one! True to form, my chapters seem to be getting continually longer as I go. I really hope you enjoy this one!

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 12: Before I Wave Goodbye . . ._

"Ralph. Would you . . . . would you like, to . . . to come inside?"

For one moment, time slowed down and the words echoed in his ears, resonating in dull, throbbing pulses long after she had stopped speaking.

The Masterwork girl looked down at him, tendrils of hair falling over her face as she leaned further forward and held out her hand to him. Her lips were parted anxiously, waiting, as if wanting to smile at him but not yet daring to. Her wide green eyes watched him unblinkingly, shifting back and forth over him in near imperceptible movements. She almost looked as if she was half afraid he wasn't really there.

For a long, long couple of seconds - still frozen in his crouched position on the floor, his mouth open, eyes blinking with disbelief ( even his left eye, which was still throbbing and almost swollen shut from the blow it had received from her magic paintbrush ) and his face more than a little red - Ralph simply stared dumbly back at her, trying to decide if she had really said it or if he had somehow imagined it.

The silence between them thickened with each passing second until it was almost palpable, the dull pounding of the rain outside slipping seamlessly beneath it. It lingered an instant longer, and suddenly became a fraction _too _long . . . the trace of hopefulness vanished from the girl's eyes and she flinched, drawing her hand back slightly. She looked quickly and nervously down at the floor, her freckled cheeks actually flushing a bit.

"Of . . . of course, you don't _have _to, if you don't . . . w-_want _to . . . " she stammered apologetically, her small shoulders tensing as if she suddenly wanted to hide inside them.

Ralph's heart punched alarmingly against the inner wall of his chest and his brain screamed at him, snapping him with a forceful jolt out of his stunned reverie.

"NO!" he half-shouted, quickly raising one hand off the floor. The Masterwork girl jumped at the volume of his voice, her eyes immediately glued to him again. Ralph's heart was pounding so fast, the beats almost bled together into one continual, delirious hum. He swallowed, his mouth cotton dry, summoning all the self-control he could muster to remain calm and keep from frightening her with his eagerness. He cleared his throat faintly, desperately willing away the hot color radiating from his face.

"I mean . . . _no," _he corrected himself quietly, looking her in the eye with what he hoped to heaven was an un-intimidating expression. "_No, _I . . . I would love to come inside."

The girl stopped, widening her eyes at him with a tiny smile of disbelief.

Without speaking, the glimmer of hope in her face returning and growing slowly brighter and brighter, she held her hand out.

Ralph focused his gaze on her thin, waif-like fingers and delicate little palm . . . gulped once, dryly . . . and slowly raised his hand to hers.

The tip of her index finger touched the tip of his in the smallest point of contact possible . . . the instant they touched, there was an audible crackling sound and a miniscule flash of blue light. They both flinched, sucking in breath and blinking with surprise as a tiny string of electricity passed between them, glowing brightly for a split second and then vanishing. They froze, the tips of their fingers hovering millimeters apart.

Ralph looked curiously up at her and was dismayed to see a new spasm of fear flicker across her expression. She narrowed her eyes warily at their fingertips, her lips parting and her wrist tensing as if she were about to pull away.

Ralph's gaze shot back down to her hand, and suddenly, something inside him clicked. Before she had time to change her mind, without stopping to let himself worry or think . . . he set his jaw, lowered his brow and took her hand.

The Masterwork girl drew in a small, sharp breath as his enormous fingers closed, swiftly but gently, around her hand, covering it past the wrist. His heart pounding so hard he was almost light-headed, Ralph felt her eyes watching him as he carefully stood up, keeping his hand closed tenderly around hers but not pulling the slightest bit of his weight on her arm as he rose first to his knees, then to his feet. Her arm rose slowly along with him, her cold fingers gradually warming as they curled shut, hidden in the hollow of his palm.

The moment he was upright again, however, Ralph remembered the inadequate parameters of the doorway. As soon as he tried to straighten up even partially, he bumped his head on the lintel and caught his shoulders on the doorposts, the wooden beams creaking sharply. He froze, shooting the girl an apologetic glance and quickly - but reluctantly - letting go of her hand.

"Ahh . . . ha, ah, just . . . excuse me, for a moment . . . "

Swallowing the urge to mutter under his breath, Ralph gave a quick, subdued groan of effort and squeezed himself backwards out of the doorway with a faint _pop, _stumbling once on the stoop and waving his arms to steady himself as he stepped back into the downpour. As he swayed to regain his balance, his left hand suddenly bumped hard into something small and solid, knocking it off its pedestal. It let out a single _clunk! _of alarm, then droppedonto the soggy grass beside the footpath. Ralph whirled around to look at it, and almost smacked himself in the forehead when he saw that it was her mailbox.

_Seriously? You can't go TWO MINUTES without __**breaking **__something!? Idiot, __**idiot**__!_

The Masterwork girl was leaning curiously to one side, craning her neck to try and see around him. Ralph grit his teeth, mentally kicking himself as he bent over and picked up her dented copper mailbox. Turning his back to the door and shaking the rain from his face, he fumbled hastily with the box, quickly trying to fit it back onto its pole . . . but he only succeeded in denting it a second time, flinching sharply when the copper bottom buckled with a loud, obvious _DLINK._

It took everything he had not to crumple the mailbox like an accordion.

Instead, Ralph clenched his jaw, steadied the enraged trembling in his hands, heaved a long, calming exhale, and slowly turned around to face the door. The girl was staring at him with wide, blank eyes. He bared his teeth in a painful, humiliated half-smile and held the copper box toward her, shrugging helplessly as raindrops _pinged _loudly off of its now muddy and dented surface.

"Ha ha . . . ah, sorry about that," he muttered sheepishly.

The girl acted as if she hadn't heard him, raising one eyebrow at her own mailbox like she had absolutely no idea what it was. Ralph's grimace tightened.

"I, uh, I have a buddy who can fix this for you . . . ?" he tried weakly.

She didn't respond, but only narrowed her eyes for a moment longer on the copper box, then blinked and lit up like a Christmas light as something seemed to abruptly dawn on her. She looked excitedly up at Ralph.

"_Mail_box!" she cried excitedly, almost proudly, as if it were the answer to some complicated puzzle. She reached out through the rain and seized the dirty object from Ralph's hands, pulling it close to her and studying it with nothing short of fascination. "This, this is called a _mailbox!_ A stationary vessel for the receiving and protection of _post_!"

Ralph's mouth opened and his brow quirked in confusion. He stared, squinting one eye as the girl actually giggled out loud with excitement and then beamed back up at him, making him jump. She opened her mouth eagerly to speak, then stopped suddenly when she saw the bewildered look on her face. Her grin vanished, and she quickly cleared her throat and straightened up, averting her eyes embarrassedly.

"I, I mean . . . of _course _its a mailbox. I . . . I knew that."

She abruptly turned around and walked five paces into the house, setting the mailbox down on a kitchen dining table and dusting her hands off. She looked back at Ralph, still watching speechlessly from the front stoop, the rain hammering his shoulders. As soon as their eyes met she became tongue-tied again, wringing her hands anxiously and blushing.

"Do you still . . . still want to come in?" she squeaked.

Ralph blinked again, shaking off his momentary distraction and remembering his heartbeat thudding in his ears.

"_Yeah, _I . . . of _course _I do," he answered. He quickly turned himself sideways and ducked as low as he could, inching his way cautiously through the doorway and just barely squeezing under the lintel.

The second he was inside, the girl darted around him like a squirrel, quickly shutting both halves of the door behind him. Ralph awkwardly stepped aside out of her way, rubbing his hands over his wet forearms and realizing from the sudden flood of warmth just how cold it had actually grown outside without his even noticing. He was wet to the skin all over, his clothes and hair clinging to him and making him shiver. He looked down and saw with disdain that he was dripping a large, dirty puddle onto the hardwood floor.

The Masterwork girl eyed him uncertainly, and for an abrupt, painfully awkward moment of silence, neither of them seemed to know what to do now that they were actually inside the house together. Ralph was just about to try and summon the courage to say something to her when he froze with his mouth open. The breath suddenly caught in his throat, held back a split second, and then burst out in a loud, violent sneeze, his head and shoulders jerking and tossing off a small shower of water droplets.

The girl jumped at the noise, then frowned guiltily, turning and scanning quickly around the room as if searching for something. Her eyes fell on a large china cabinet pushed into the far corner of the room, and she snapped her fingers, muttering indiscernible words under her breath in a steady stream as she darted across the room, dropped to her knees in front of the chest and threw open the cabinet doors.

Ralph sniffed and rubbed his nose, then noticed her erratic movements, watching in baffled silence as she proceeded to ransack the lower cabinets, pulling out fistfuls of cloth napkins and dishtowels, glancing at each only long enough to shake her head at it before tossing it over her shoulder. Piles of discarded rags and stray cloths of all colors accumulated rapidly behind her. Ralph shuffled awkwardly on his feet as he watched, wet and shivering and absolutely clueless.

_The way she looked at things, the way she moved cautiously around the furniture, the way her gaze never stopped moving from one direction to another . . . she acted as if she had never laid eyes on her own kitchen before, as if she were waiting for someone to jump out and reprimand her at any moment for touching her own things. . ._

"Uh, ex . . . excuse me, ma'am?" Ralph said timidly, standing on his toes to try and peer over her shoulder from across the room. "Can I . . . uh . . . can I help you _find _anyth - "

"_Gotchya!" _the girl suddenly cried, cutting him off with a triumphant exclamation as she held up the edge of a huge, cream-colored fabric, inspecting it briefly and then nodding once with satisfaction. She jumped eagerly to her feet, hurrying back across the room and dragging the enormous sheet behind her. Without even pausing, she shot out her free arm and seized Ralph by the hand, pulling him further into the room. The second they touched again, blooms of heat immediately radiated through her fingertips into his, shooting straight up his arm and rising into his cheeks despite the heavy chill still clinging to him from his wet clothes. Ralph's eyes shot wide open and he swallowed loudly, staring unblinkingly at their clasped hands as he obediently followed her to the table.

Once there, she let go of his hand and snaked around him, pulling out the nearest chair and then looking up at him expectantly. For a second, Ralph could only blink at her, his mind racing to catch up with what was happening.

_What was she . . . what __**was **__it with this girl? One minute she was screaming in terror at the very sight of him, the next, she couldn't remember what she'd been scared of . . . one second, she's so shy she can barely look him in the face, and the next, she's pushing him around her kitchen like he's a hat rack._

Staring another second at her eager, glowing little smile before shaking himself back to reality, Ralph looked over his shoulder and frowned skeptically at the straight-backed wooden chair. He didn't really fancy the idea of destroying two of her possessions within the first ten minutes of meeting her.

"Is . . . ah . . . is that a _sturdy chair?" _he asked warily, looking back at her from the corner of his eye.

Her smile straightened. She glanced at him, then down at the chair, then back at him again, the large white sheet still clutched in her hands and trailing on the floor. She shrugged, as if not understanding why it would matter.

Ralph exhaled, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. "Well, al_right . . . " _he muttered reluctantly as he pulled the chair up behind him, trying to lower his weight down as gently as possible. Slowly, gingerly, he sat down. The spindly-legged chair creaked once, then settled, the floorboards bowing beneath it almost imperceptibly.

Ralph opened his eyes and looked down, breathing a small sigh of relief. The Masterwork girl was smiling ear to ear. As soon as he was sitting down, she held up the huge sheet she had taken from the china cabinet and whipped it up into the air, letting it settle over Ralph's shoulders and then wrapping it tightly around him. Ralph gaped at her as she stood back, looking him over happily.

"It's a tablecloth!" she said brightly. "You can use it to dry off."

Ralph blinked at her, then looked down at the thick cotton sheet he was now draped with. It was indeed a tablecloth . . . but it was also warm and surprisingly soft, and he _was_ still damp all over with cold rain.

"Wow, um . . . _thanks._"

Rather than question it, Ralph shrugged and gratefully ran the cloth over his face, then vigorously rubbed it over his head for a few seconds, his hair sticking up in all directions when he pulled it away.

The girl beamed at him, her eyes glittering warmly . . . and then, abruptly, her smile vanished and she gasped sharply, clapping her hands over his mouth as if she'd suddenly seen something horrible on his face. Ralph's heart leapt into his mouth, his mind instantly shooting off into a hundred worst-scenario directions.

"What?" he asked nervously, touching his jaw with his fingertips. "What's wrong?"

The Masterwork girl lowered her hands, looking mortified. "You . . . your _eye! Oh, _my . . . I completely forgot, I . . . I am _so sorry about that. _Are you al_right?"_

Ralph blinked, only remembering what she was talking about when he traced his fingers up the side of his face and felt his left eye. It was warm and puffed up like a marshmallow, with dried traces of blue paint still smeared over it. The girl glanced down at his forearm as he was feeling his face and gasped again.

"And your _arms!" _she cried.

Ralph craned his neck to look around at the outer side of his arm. The blue streak was still splattered horizontally across it, but underneath the edges of an angry red welt were beginning to rise. The cold outside must have numbed him to it . . . but now, as he was warming up, a blunt sting was beginning to radiate gradually from each of his three minor brushstroke injuries. Ralph shrugged, ignoring the pain and trying to smile reassuringly.

"Oh, what, _these?" _he pointed one finger at his eye and laughed softly, biting back a sharp wince. "These are _nothing. _Please, don't even . . . "

The girl dashed away in the middle of his sentence. First, she ran back to the pile of towels and rags in front of her china cabinet, seizing two of them and hurrying back to drop them on the table. Then, pausing only for an instant to look around, as if getting her bearings, she ran into the tiled section of the kitchen and began throwing the cupboards open one by one, searching them. Ralph followed her with eyes, dumbfounded, back and forth until she finally found a stack of ceramic bowls. She pulled down two, nearly knocking over the rest, and dropped them next to the sink, peering uncertainly at the silver knobs for just a second before wrenching one of them sharply and turning on a blast of water. She filled the first bowl, set it down, then shut off the right tap and turned on the left. Leaving it running, she then dashed back to the wooden ladder in the middle of the room and scurried up it, disappearing through the open hatch at the top without so much as glancing back.

" . . . worry . . . about it?" Ralph finished after the long pause, trailing off and blinking at the spot where she had been.

There was a flurry of pounding footsteps, a dull crash, and the sound of glass jars rolling on the floor above. There was a brief pause, then the girl's feet reappeared through the hatch. She hurried backwards down the ladder, cradling a fat, glass bottle full of thick, amber liquid in one arm. Without even stopping to look at Ralph, she plunked the bottle on the table and ran back to the sink, where the rush of water from the tap was now billowing up clouds of steam and fogging the window over the basin. She filled up the second large bowl with hot water, then shut off the tap, balancing a dangerously lilting bowl in each hand. She trotted back to the dining table and dropped the twin bowls of water onto it, splashing only a little over the edges and then straightening up to look Ralph in the eye. She was panting heavily and squinting at his swollen left eye with a remorseful grimace. The entire, sprinting charade had transpired in less than a minute.

Ralph blinked at her.

"Are you . . . o_kay?"_

The girl paused for a moment, leaning one hand on the table as she caught her breath. She looked at him, hesitantly . . . then shook her head.

"I don't think so," she answered in complete seriousness.

Ralph's face fell, his brow knitting with confusion and concern . . . but before he could say anything else, she had picked up one of the clean rags and doused it in the cold water, wringing it out and holding it up to his face. He held his breath as she stood up on her tiptoes, folded the cold cloth into a square, and pressed it gently over his swollen eye.

"Hold that there," she instructed warmly. Ralph, too stunned from her sudden, inexplicable act of nurturing to speak . . . or to even close his mouth completely . . . obeyed, carefully holding the compress over his eye with his left hand.

The girl nodded satisfactorily, then unscrewed the top off the glass bottle and held it up for him to see, the warm light of the room shining softly through the amber liquid.

"Linseed oil," she explained, covering the bottle's mouth with the second clean rag and tipping some of the oil onto it. She set the bottle back down and looked him straight in the eye. "Hold up your arm."

Not knowing what else to do, Ralph silently obeyed her again, bending his elbow and raising his right arm chest high so that the outer side of his forearm was pointing toward her. The girl pulled back the edge of the tablecloth so that his skin was exposed, and then, leaning closely over it, she began to gently, carefully rub the oiled towel over the welted paint stripe.

Ralph watched her with a mixture of fascination and a disbelief so baffling it almost made him dizzy. His mind was still reeling from everything that had transpired within the last fifteen minutes . . . it felt like hours ago he had been standing outside knocking on her door, and yet in reality everything had happened so mind-bogglingly fast, and _now . . . _now, _here she was, _standing right there in front of him, bending over his arm so closely he could almost feel the warmth of her breath on his skin. _Her, _the girl who had all but entirely consumed his every thought for the past two days, who had somehow captivated him so completely with one accidental glance that he had been irresistibly drawn to her, like a moth to a flame . . . the girl whose name he _still_ didn't know . . . she was holding his arm with one hand and cleaning his bruise with the other, as warmly and tenderly as if she'd known him for years. His eyes were glued immovably to her face, watching her as she narrowed her brow at the stubborn blue paint clinging to his skin.

If it weren't for the very real twinge in his swollen eye, the dull, gentle scrub of the rag over his throbbing welt . . . the undeniable warmth of her hands, pressing softly into his skin . . . he would have had trouble believing it wasn't all just a bizarre dream.

The rag abruptly exhausted it's spot of oil, and as some of the dry bristles rubbed over a raw spot on his arm Ralph cringed, sucking a tiny breath of air through his teeth. The girl flinched and looked up, frowning apologetically.

"Sorry!" she winced, quickly applying more linseed to the rag and hunching over to dissolve the paint away with even softer motions than before. The blue stain slowly began to flake away, leaving behind a thin sheen of oil that, he was surprised to find, actually helped to soothe the angry red welt a bit.

"Hey, no worries," Ralph smiled through slightly clenched teeth. He paused, gulping down the nervous heartbeats that had been jumping at the bottom of his throat since the minute she had draw close to him. He hesitated, wanted desperately to keep talking with her, but having serious trouble finding the right words. He gave a small, shaky laugh. "That, ah, that brush of yours . . . you sure pack a wallop with that thing. I've never seen paint _do that _before."

She raised her eyes to him, almost smiling at the awkward compliment. "That's my brush for the Battle-strokes mini-game. The marks disappear after a few seconds if I paint them in midair, but they stick like glue to everything else . . . . only . . . I've never used it before on . . . on a . . . a . . . uh . . . " she trailed off and averted her gaze, clearing her throat sharply and changing the subject. "This . . . uh, this oil is the only thing I have that will take it off," she muttered under her breath as she concentrated closely on the remaining inch of the stripe. "Hold still now, just a few . . . more . . . _got it!"_

The last bit of the blue paint eased away from Ralph's skin, and the girl straightened up happily.

"There! How does that feel?"

She smiled up at him, and Ralph's ever-present blush darkened imperceptibly. He peered over the edge of his forearm with his good eye, raising his brow in surprise at the sharp improvement. Not only was the paint gone, but the angry redness and dull throb of the welt was already fading.

"That's . . . _much_ better, actually."

The girl beamed at him gladly, bouncing once on her heels. "Ok, now the other one."

Ralph traded hands on the cold cloth, holding out his left arm for her. She oiled the cloth again and immediately went to work. Ralph cleared his throat, shifting awkwardly in his crossed-over position.

"Soooo . . . um . . . _Masterwork. _It's like . . . an _art_ game, and you're . . . you're a painter, then, right?" He inwardly cursed himself immediately after the words left his mouth, cringing at how stupid they sounded out loud.

But the girl didn't appear to notice. She simply nodded brightly and kept massaging with the rag, quickly darting one hand up to tuck a loose lock of hair behind her ear.

"That's right. I'm the artist."

"Yeah . . . the artist," Ralph mumbled, his mind racing for something, _anything, _intelligentto say. "And . . . you live here, in this house?"

"Uh-huh. That's my studio up there," she pointed briefly to the open hatch at the top of the ladder . . . then chuckled to herself. "To tell you the truth, I didn't even know this kitchen was _down _here until you started knocking."

Ralph opened his mouth to respond, then stopped as her words registered. He lifted the compress away from his eye to look disbelievingly at the top of her head.

"You didn't _what? _But . . . you've been plugged in for two whole days, _how did you not -?"_

The girl stopped scrubbing, the rag hovering over the last bit of paint on his left arm, and Ralph quickly cut himself off. She hesitated for a few seconds, then finished off the end of the stripe, keeping her face hidden as she turned around and let her hands rest on the edge of the table, her head hanging slightly. She stood there with her back turned for a moment, looking thoughtfully down at the bowl of hot water.

"Ralph," she said quietly. He twitched at the suddenly anxious, almost grave tone to her voice. Then, she spun around to face him again, her green eyes suddenly boring into him with the same pleading dread as when she'd asked if he had a name . . . the pleading dread of a question she seemed afraid of hearing the answer to.

"Ralph, am I . . . do I seem _normal _to you?"

He blinked, his jaw hovering soundlessly for an instant. He was again intensely aware of their proximity. When he tried to speak, his voice issued out in a thin, feeble crack.

"Uh . . . normal, _how?"_

"Well, there . . . there are other characters, inside the other games, out there, in the arcade, right? Am I . . . like _them?"_

"No," Ralph blurted out immediately, before he could stop himself. "You're not like _any_one I've ever met before."

Her face fell, and Ralph's good eye bugged as he realized what he'd just said.

"But, but I mean that in a _good way!" _he added hastily. "I just meant that you . . . I mean, you're . . . _you're . . . "_

" . . . strange," she finished for him, her brow knitting sadly.

"_No! _No, you're not . . . _strange,_ just . . .er . . . _diff_erent."

She sighed, wringing the cloth absently in her fingers and looking down at the floor for a moment.

"Different," she whispered sadly to herself. There was a brief silence between them, during which Ralph could only stare helplessly, racking his brain for something to say.

_He could practically __**feel**__ the moment going down hill . . . his first meeting, his first conversation with this girl, and he was blowing it, __**blowing **__it . . . _

_Come on, stupid, think, __**think**__! . . ._

"Hey," she said softly, breaking the silence looking up at him. "Look at me."

Stunned, Ralph obeyed her, only to rear back in alarm and nearly topple the small chair over backwards as the girl took another bold step towards him, closing the already miniscule gap between them and putting her face straight up to his, peering at him from inches away. She took the cold towel out of his hand and tossed it back onto the table. Then, without a word of warning she put one hand flat across his cheek and turned his head to the right, closely inspecting his bruised eye.

"The swelling's finally down," she observed thoughtfully. "Hold still for a minute."

Her instructions were superfluous . . . at that instant, he wouldn't have been able to move if he tried. Ralph was rooted to the spot like a statue, staring speechlessly straight ahead with his cheeks burning as the girl shifted in the corner of his eye, her small hand moving up to brace against his temple as the other lifted the oiled towel to his face, dabbing ever so lightly at the tender skin just beneath his eye.

No, he didn't move. He hardly breathed.

As she gently cleaned the dried paint from around his eye, the girl began to talk softly under her breath, mumbling as if to straighten out her own thoughts aloud.

"It's just . . . something doesn't _feel _right. I don't know what, or how, but . . . it's like there's some kind of _wall _around me_, _or . . . or a weight, or a _fog, _or . . . I don't know. It's just like _some_thing is holding me, slowing me down, keeping me back. Since the minute I was plugged in, I've been learning as I go, but . . . everything comes to me suddenly, in jumps, in pieces, and . . . and no matter how much I learn, I _always _have the feeling that I'm _missing _something . . . that I'm only getting half of the picture."

As she talked, and he slowly grappled to terms with the fact that she was hovering there just inches from his face, practically leaning against him to work away slowly at the paint . . . the beet-red flush in Ralph's cheeks gradually faded, his nerves slowly calming to the point that he could take in what she was saying . . . and the more she said, the more he began to understand the strange, unidentifiable feeling he had had about her game, about _her._

Ralph looked cautiously at her from the corners of his eyes as she worked, his brow narrowing with thought.

"And then . . . then, when _you _came in . . . " she paused, the rag stopping for a moment as she looked straight into his bad eye, suddenly marveling at him as if she'd never truly seen his face before, " . . . when _you _came, I . . . I . . . "

She stammered, and suddenly pulled back, moving away from him, but her gaze never wavering from his face.

" . . . I . . . I didn't know what to do," she whispered, slowly lowering the oiled rag down to the table without looking away. "I don't know why, but I just got so _scared, _and . . . and there was something about the tunnel, but now . . . I can't seem to re_mem_ber . . . "

For the first time in what felt like hours, Ralph fully opened his bruised eye, blinking at its renewed scope now that the paint was no longer crusting it half shut . . . and along with the clarity of vision, something suddenly occurred to him, something so plain and immediate he was amazed he hadn't realized it before.

"There . . . isn't anyone else here in this game with you, is there?"

She looked at him quietly for a moment . . . then shook her head.

"No," she answered softly.

"And before I came in, you . . . you had never . . . ?"

She shook her head again, slowly. "No, I hadn't. You . . . you're the only other person I've ever met, Ralph."

The words resonated in his ears, their full gravity taking a moment to sink in . . . Ralph sat up straighter in the chair, and all of a sudden he felt riddled with guilt.

_She'd been plugged in for two days, yet she didn't seem to understand some of the basic concepts of how their existence worked . . . of the arcade, and the other games, other characters. Something was obviously wrong with her programming, there had to be . . . her disappearing house, the flashes of blue light, the memories that seemed to vanish right out of her head, like lightning bugs escaping a jar . . . the way she talked, the way she looked at things, the way she had looked at __**him **__. . . it all made sense now. The virtual fabric of her game itself must have a glitch, or a coding error, a mis-calibration . . . . __**something**__ . . . _

_And not only that . . . she was alone. She was the only character, the only living thing in her world._

_Never, not once in all the thirty-one years of his life had Ralph seen or heard of a game that had only one, single, solitary character . . . not once. Even if they were nothing more than background fillers . . . fans cheering in racetrack bleachers, disposable robots exploding in cut-scenes . . . 8-bit __**birds**__ flying across the top of the screen . . . no matter what, __**every game **__had more than a single character. _

_But here . . . now, he understood what it was about her game that had seemed so odd, so unidentifiably perturbing to him as he had walked along the footpath toward her house. It was the stillness, the emptiness. There had been nothing, not a single sign of life in the entire game apart from her._

_She was completely alone here, in a damaged game, trying to come to terms the fact of her own existence entirely by herself._

_And then, when he'd just waltzed right in and knocked on her door . . . no wonder she had been so frightened._

As the pieces all rapidly came together in his head, Ralph's face fell, his heart suddenly wrenching as he looked at her troubled, confused face.

"Here," she said, turning suddenly back to the table, dousing the cold compress in the bowl of hot water and wringing it out. She leaned back toward him and lifted the now steaming cloth to his eye again, gently wiping away the remaining thin coating of linseed oil, then stepping back and doing to the same to the red marks on his forearms. When she'd finished, she pulled away again, standing at the edge of the table for a moment as if suddenly not knowing what to do . . . then, awkwardly, she pulled out a chair on the table edge to his left and gingerly sat down. She rested her elbows on the table, hunching over and staring absently down at the wood grain. Ralph watched her, his heart growing heavier and heavier as the full realization of everything he now understood sunk in.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. Then, with a sudden, quiet whimper of frustration, the girl pushed her hair out of her eyes, resting her forehead wearily on the heel of her hand.

"I just don't understand," she muttered. "If . . . if _you're _here, and . . . and you came from the tunnel on the _left, _then that means . . . why, why do I feel like I . . . like _you_ . . . "

She looked up at him, her eyes searching desperately.

"Who _are _you, Ralph?" she asked, sitting up straighter and turning towards him. "Who are you, and . . . where did you _come from?" _she spoke as if it were honestly the first time the question had occurred to her.

Ralph stared back at her, unflinching. A strange feeling had overtaken him, a feeling that seemed to harden inside of him and left him abruptly, inexplicably, entirely without fear. All of a sudden he wanted to tell her everything about himself, absolutely everything, including the bad, without the slightest hesitation. He didn't care anymore about presenting himself to her in a good light, didn't care about trying to tactfully cover up his rough edges.

_Suddenly, all he wanted was for her to understand . . . for her not to feel so lost._

He leaned forward, pulling his chair closer and laying both hands flat on the table between them, looking her straight in the eye.

"I'm from a game called Fix-It Felix Jr. It's the second-oldest game in the arcade, and it's across the aisle, about four consoles left of here. We've been in the arcade for thirty-one years."

The girl's eyes opened wide, her jaw dropping as she stared at him in disbelief.

"Thirty . . . thirty-one _what?"_

"Thirty-one years," Ralph repeated, his voice deliberate and straightforward. "And in my game . . . in, in my game . . . " he faltered for a second, then took a small, steadying breath, and let it out again. " . . . . in my game, I'm the _bad guy."_

The girl blinked, then narrowed her eyes curiously.

"What do you mean, 'bad guy?' What's a _bad guy?_"

The way she said it almost made Ralph lose his focus. His mind reeled, realizing in one dizzying flash of comprehension that he was potentially speaking to the only person he had ever met, or might ever _meet, _who was completely unaware everything that his label implied . . . who didn't hear the words _bad guy _and immediately see him through a knee-jerk filter of negativity. He swallowed and kept going, not allowing himself to stop or hold back any bit of the truth.

"A bad guy is . . . well . . . a bad guy is who the gamers play the game to try to _stop_, or beat, or . . . you know,de_stroy_. That's . . . that's me. I'm the guy they're not supposed to like. There's a building full of people in my game, and my job is to . . . well, _wreck it. _I wreck the building, and the good guy fixes it. The players win the game by beating _me_."

The girl stared at him silently for a few seconds, a strange play of emotions crossing her face. She looked intrigued, then briefly excited, then suddenly horrified. She put her hands on the table and sat up straighter, leaning toward him.

"Not supposed to _like _you . . . you mean . . . the gamers, the _children _. . . they play the game to _destroy you?"_

Ralph started at the horrified tone of her voice, the incredulous gleam of sadness lighting in her eyes. He raised his hands, quickly trying to assuage her.

"Well, I mean . . . no, _no, _not _exactly . . . _de_stroy_ isn't really the right word, I just get tossed off the top of a building, but . . . " Ralph sighed, scratching the side of his head thoughtfully as the girl continued to stare at him in sympathetic shock. "It's . . . it's a little hard to ex_plain._ Being bad is my _job. _It's who I was meant to be. I do bad things, the players try to stop me. That's just the way it is."

The horrified look on the girl's face deepened, and Ralph winced, leaning forward and trying desperately to sound reassuring. "But it's o_kay_, really! That's just what being a bad guy is a_bout. _It's an important part of the game. You do bad things so the heroes can stop you . . . you're bad, so that they can be _good._"

She exhaled, her shoulders and her gaze seeming to relax slightly . . . but she was still pinning him with a confused, sympathetic stare.

"But . . . I don't understand. You . . . you _aren't _bad, Ralph."

He opened his mouth preemptively to respond . . . then froze.

His cheeks, which had _finally _just returned to their normal color, instantly flushed again. He held her gaze speechlessly for a few seconds.

"You . . . you think so?" he heard himself squeak, just audibly.

The girl nodded, shrugging with an obvious frown. "Of _course. _You're not bad at _all. _Why would anyone want to _destroy _you?"

Ralph blinked, struggling to find his voice again.

"Well . . . I . . . I'm good at pre_tending _to be bad . . . I guess," he croaked. "And . . . well, it might not seem like it now, but . . . I _do _have kind of a temper on me."

The girl quirked one eye at him, a small smile of fascination suddenly hooking her mouth.

"How _strange," _she muttered, more to herself than to him. "Your game is about pre_tending _to be something you're not? Wow . . . . I couldn't _imagine _having to act like someone else when I play _my _game. I don't think I could even . . . "

She stopped suddenly, pausing in mid-sentence as a new thought visibly occurred to her. She turned back to Ralph, one eyebrow lifted skeptically.

" . . . wait a minute," she muttered. "So . . . if you're _not_ a part of _my _game, then . . . how did you get here?"

Ralph started in surprise, flattening his brow at her.

"I . . . I just came in through the tunnel, remember? The one on the _left," _he added hastily, remembering her terrified outburst from earlier.

"But where does that tunnel _lead to? _How did you . . ._" _she started, as confused as ever . . . then, before he could answer, she stopped, her eyes widening, another revelation hitting her in mid-thought. She flattened her hands on the table, pushing herself up suddenly on her arms and leaning toward Ralph so fiercely he started backwards, tilting his upper body away from her.

"You can _leave your game?" _she cried, her incredulous green orbs piercing so sharply into his that he almost began to sweat.

"Well . . . _yeah," _he answered, easing back down in his chair. "Of course. Everyone can . . . _you _can."

Her mouth dropping open in stunned silence, the girl slowly sat back down, lowering her arms to the table and staring straight ahead in disbelief.

"I . . . I can leave my game?" she muttered to herself. Ralph watched as the reality of the idea visibly hardened within her gaze, her brow straightening into a solid, unyielding line of utter amazement.

"I can _leave my game," _she whispered.

"_Sure _you can!" Ralph said brightly, trying to encourage her out of her stunned, almost frightened revelation. "There's an entire arcade out there full of consoles, and inside each console is a whole _world _you can explore, full of new people to meet. You don't have to stay in here by yourself."

"By myself," she repeated, murmuring uncertainly as her eyes shifted over the surface of the table. "By my_self . . . "_

Ralph frowned worriedly, leaning over to look at her down-turned face.

"What's wrong?" he asked softly.

The girl looked back up at him, and she was sudden rigid with apprehension. She shook her head slowly back and forth.

"I . . . I don't think I want to leave my game," she muttered quickly.

"What? Why _not?" _Ralph pressed gently.

She just continued shaking her head, eyeing him warily. "I just . . . no. I don't know why. I just don't want to go out there. I . . . I don't like those tunnels."

Ralph's shoulders slumped, his brow knitting with frustration.

"You don't have anything to be _scared _of. I just came through the portal myself, and I promise, there's _nothing _to - "

"Why _did _you come here?" the girl demanded suddenly, her voice rising sharply as she pinned him with an accusing look. "Why did you come into my game? What do you _want?"_

Ralph started, then went completely rigid, paralyzed under her anxious gaze. Desperate flashes of memory surfaced in his mind, garbled bits of words and speeches he had rehearsed in his head, prepared for exactly this moment.

_Clyde, the Bad-Anon invitation . . . his whole, prearranged excuse for coming to see her in the first place . . ._

As he sat there, immobilized in the grip of her pleading eyes . . . all of a sudden, they didn't matter. All of his carefully thought-out excuses vaporized instantly in the heat of her gaze, and before he knew what was happening he heard himself blurting the truth out loud.

"I came . . . because I wanted to meet you."

The girl froze. Her demanding scowl melted away.

"I saw you, two days ago, from across the arcade. I was . . . watching, when your game turned on, and then . . . I saw you. I saw you look out through the screen, and . . . I don't know what happened. I just knew that . . . that I had to come. I had to meet you."

Ralph looked down, embarrassedly hiding his face from her.

There was a long, still minute of silence.

The heat creeping up his neck and into his face burning hotter and hotter with every passing second of silence, shrinking under the growing weight of his own humiliation . . . not daring to look up for fear of the perturbed look he was almost certain he would see on her face . . . Ralph's eyes darted across the surface of the table, desperate to look anywhere except back at her, when suddenly, his gaze fell upon the dirty, dented copper mailbox that was still sitting on the opposite end of the table. As he looked at it, something on the side suddenly caught his eye . . . he squinted, then shot his eyes wide open, completely forgetting to be embarrassed as he bluntly reached out and grabbed the box with one hand, holding it close to his face and staring in shock at the raised markings that were peeking out just visibly from underneath the coating of mud.

_They were letters . . ._

_. . . . the letters of a __**name.**_

"What? What is it?" he heard the girl's voice suddenly pipe up directly beside him, her stunned silence broken under the jolt of curiosity. She had jumped to her feet and was swaying on her tiptoes, leaning over his shoulder to peer anxiously down at the box.

His voice caught in his throat, Ralph slowly, carefully ran the tip of his finger over the side of the mailbox, wiping away the mud and revealing a single word, stamped on the sheet of copper in raised, square letters. Ralph swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry.

"I . . . I think it's . . . your _name," _he whispered.

The girl's hands, which she had laid on Ralph's shoulder to brace herself, instantly tightened, her fingertips fisting in the loose tablecloth and digging into his skin. She stood there, going rigid and completely silent.

Ralph swallowed again, his heart racing, and focused his eyes on the copper letters.

He stared at the writing for a few seconds, then frowned and narrowed his brow at the strange name he wasn't sure how to pronounce.

"Mich . . . Mycha . . . Mik . . . Mikka . . . ?"

The girl took a long, deep, steadying breath, then reached one arm over Ralph's shoulder and gently tracing the tips of her fingers over the letters of her own name.

_"Michelangela," _she whispered.

The echo of her soft, breathy voice seemed to hang suspended in the air, almost tangible, for one long, quiet moment.

His heart still pounding, Ralph peered at her from the corners of his eyes, pushing down a third dry swallow at the proximity of her face to his. She was staring down at the mailbox, the top half of her body practically hanging over his shoulder as if she'd forgotten he was even there.

For half a minute, neither of them spoke. Then, the girl . . .

. . . _no, _he thought suddenly, narrowing his eyes at the side of her face as he realized anew, for the first time he'd first seen across the arcade . . . _how beautiful she really was . . ._

_No . . . not __**the girl**__ . . . . Michelangela._

. . . then, Michelangela slowly dropped back down to her feet, moving silently around Ralph and gently taking the mailbox out of his hand. He watched her speechlessly as she took a few dazed steps away from the table, moving to stand in the middle of the room with her back turned to him, staring down at the copper writing. She ran her hand once more over the letters, whispering to herself so quietly Ralph could scarcely hear her . . .

_"I have a name."_

Ralph slowly pushed his chair out from the table, absently letting the tablecloth fall down from his now dry shoulders and settle softly around his feet on the floor. He leaned forward, hovering uncertainly, not knowing whether to stand or stay seated . . . then, before he could move further, Michelangela whirled around to look at him, her eyes shining and a huge grin of amazement spreading across her face as she let out a high-pitched, incredulous laugh. Practically trembling with excitement, she held the box straight out for a few seconds for Ralph to see, then tossed it clean over her shoulder, not even looking at it as it sailed across the room and landed on her adobe countertop with a deafening _CRASH. _

Ralph jumped in alarm and flinched at the copper box as it crumpled in another dent against the hard counter . . . but he barely had time to blink at it before his attention was yanked immediately back in front of him as Michelangela crossed the room in two running strides and leapt straight at him.

Ralph felt his heart shoot into his mouth like a rocket and every nerve in his body scream with simultaneous hot and cold as the Masterwork girl flung both arms around his neck and crashed against his torso in a vice-like embrace, the entire weight of her small body falling against him like a timbering tree trunk. Ralph went instantly rigid, his spine stiffening like a ramrod and his shoulders hunching up around his ears as the force of the impact tilted him backwards in the chair, the two of them teetering dangerously on two spindly legs for what felt like half a minute before crashing back down onto all four feet. Even after the chair fell flat again, creaking sharply and shaking the floorboards, Michelangela kept her arms clamped around Ralph's neck, their heartbeats pounding side by side and her heels lifted off the floor.

"I have a name! I have a _name!" _she was crying fervently over and over, her lips inches from his left ear, bouncing slightly up and down on her toes with each repetition. Ralph stared straight ahead over her shoulder, gaping-mouthed and red to the roots of his hair.

She gave him a final squeeze, then fell giggling back to her feet, apparently not noticing his beet-red expression of abject stupor as she grabbed the sides of his face with both hands and shook it gleefully, leaning so close their foreheads practically touched.

"I have a _NAME, Ralph!" _she shouted, beaming at him straight in the eye for a split second and then releasing him just as abruptly, jumping away and hopping up and down in an impromptu little dance of delirious joy.

"I have a name, I have a _name! _I'm _not _nobody, I'M MICH_ELAN_ - "

Then, in the middle of her exuberant outburst, Michelangela stopped sharply, halting with one arm raised over her head and falling silent in mid-sentence, a strange look abruptly quirking on her face. She turned suddenly and looked at Ralph, half of her nose scrunched up and her eyebrow raised.

"I'm . . . _Michelangela?" _she finished, repeating her name slowly, rolling it thoughtfully over tongue. "Mich-el-an-gela? _That's _my name?"

She let her arms fall limply back to her sides, slumping forward and grimacing weirdly.

"Wwwww_ow_," she said to herself, scratching behind her ear and blinking critically off into space. "Ralph . . . . . . my name is _stupid."_

Ralph didn't answer. He hadn't been able to move since she second she'd thrown herself at him, and he could still feel the cool imprints of her small hands radiating through the pink flush still smoldering on either side of his face. He felt as if his throat had turned to cotton and his tongue had turned to felt. When she said his name again, he blinked and shook himself, just barely able to cobble together enough coherence to speak, his brain barely aware of what his mouth was saying.

"It's . . . not . . . no . . . _wow . . . . _uhh . . . . _no . . . _I . . . think it's a _great _name."

Michelangela squinted at him skeptically.

"Really? You do?"

Ralph nodded dumbly, his eyes glazing dreamily as he stared off into space.

"Oh, yeah. _Definitely_," he muttered.

She quirked one corner of her mouth uncertainly, folding her arms and taking a few thoughtful paces back and forth.

"Hmmmm. _Mich-el-angela. _Mmm. . . I . . . I don't know, Ralph. It's just, so . . . _long. _Michelangela . . . no, I don't even like _saying _the whole thing anymore. What do I do? I mean . . . am I just _stuck _with it? Do I have any choice, or . . . . . hey, Ralph? . . . _Ralph!"_

She called his name louder, moving back to the edge of the table and snapping her fingers near his face. Ralph jumped, jolting at last out of his dazed, floating reverie and clearing his throat embarrassedly, sitting straight up so sharply the chair rocked again and he clamped one hand loudly on the table to steady himself.

"YEAH! Yeah, I hear ya!" he barked loudly, blinking away the last traces of fuzziness from his brain and forcing himself back to the present. He looked sharply at Michelangela, gulping as the blush threatened again. "Uuuuumm . . .well, uh, if you _really _don't like it . . . h-how . . . how about a nickname, then?" he croaked softly.

She looked confused for a split second, then suddenly lit up with a huge smile as the meaning of the new word quickly registered.

"Of course! A _nick_name! _Perfect! _What's my nickname, Ralph?"

He blinked in surprise, unable to look away from her gleeful, beaming face, his heart still thudding loudly in his ears.

"Y-you want, _me, _to . . . right _now?"_

"Of course! You can't give a nickname to your_self, _can you?"

Clumsily inching his chair a few feet away from her, Ralph rose, slightly dizzily, to his feet, his eyes glued helplessly to her as he took a few nervous, backward steps. Michelangela followed him like a shadow, leaning eagerly toward him as he continued backing away, his thoughts racing.

_So fast, everything was happening so fast . . . he was still reeling from the weight of her arms around his neck, the touch of her hands on his face . . . his stomach was turning knots, his throat was stuffed with cotton . . . she wanted __**him **__to give her a nickname, right that second . . . ?_

_Thump._

Ralph jumped as his back suddenly bumped into the north wall of the room, Michelangela bearing straight up in front of him with her unflinching smile. He ran one hand through his hair, gulping thickly, half of him afraid . . . _and half of him almost_ _hoping . . . _that she was about to pounce on him again, the same unpredictable look flashing in her wide, brilliant green eyes . . .

_Michelangela, Michelangela . . . . come on, think . . . what could be short for Michelangela?_

His mind racing frantically, Ralph looked down at her and blurted out the first thing that popped into his head.

"How . . . uh . . . how about . . . . . Mike?"

Michelangela's smile wavered thoughtfully, and she looked down for a moment, rubbing her chin. The instant her eyes were turned away, Ralph cringed and silently pounded his knuckles into his forehead.

_**Mike**__? Seriously? **That** was the best he could come up with?_

There were another few seconds of silence. Still grimacing, Ralph peeked down past his fist and started with surprise to see Michelangela beginning to nod slowly, a warm glow spreading across her face. She looked back up at him, suddenly beaming and sparkling like a firecracker.

"_Mike_," she repeated, slipping into a broad grin as she tested the sound of the name aloud. "Mike . . . . just _Mike." _

Ralph slowly lowered his hand and blinked at her, hardly able to believe it. _No, there was no way . . . she . . . she actually __**liked **__it?_

Ralph jumped sharply as the girl let out a delighted squeal and bounced onto her toes, squeezing both hands into fists and hugging them over her heart.

"I _love _it!" she cried. "I have a _name, _a _real _name! Ralph . . . I have a _nickname!"_

He stared back down at her, a faint smile of disbelief tugging at the corner of his mouth . . . when suddenly, he saw a familiar gleam flaring in her eyes, and he realized what was about to happen before it did, powerless to move or even speak. Mike's eyes flashed at him, she let out another irrepressible cry of happiness, and in one fluid, inescapable motion she threw herself against his chest, this time wrapping her arms around his torso . . . or rather _trying _to, the tips of her outstretched fingers barely able to reach the edges of his back . . . and pinning him flat against the wall.

The breath caught like a stopper at the top of his lungs, and time seemed to grind to a halt as Ralph felt a wave of heat unlike any before rippling through his entire body, issuing out from the press of her body against his stomach and sides. His jaw hovering, working uselessly as small, guttural noises began to creep up his throat, Ralph looked down, blinking, at the top of Mike's curly head, which reached just high enough for her to press her ear over his pounding heartbeat as she squeezed him tighter. For what felt like a small eternity, he simply stood there with his back flat to the wall, his arms hovering paralyzed at his sides as she leaned completely into him. Suddenly, piercing through the sweltering haze in his head like an arrow, he heard her voice whispering softly below him, felt the tickling movement of her jaw as she spoke.

_"I'm so happy you came to meet me."_

Her hands fisted gently in the fabric of his shirt.

Still unable to breathe, barely able to believe it was really happening, Ralph was abruptly startled to feel his arms slowly closing around her, as if moving of their own accord. He watched, a single glimmer of perspiration beading at his temple, as his hands drew closer and closer to the small of her back, hovering inches over her and almost trembling.

His palm was a hair's width from laying across her shoulders when suddenly, it was all too much. The heat radiating through him hit its peak, and something inside him gave a sharp, sobering jolt, as if snapping him out a trance. He whipped his hands away from her back, his breath suddenly returning to him in a single burst, and his chest began to heave shallowly as he gasped in and out, the air rushing to his head.

Mike loosened her hold on him and leaned back, looking up in surprise.

"Ralph? Is something wrong?"

The sweet, oblivious tone of her voice hit him like a splash of cold water. Shaking his head once and breathing in a long, steadying inhale, Ralph forced himself to put his thumbs on her shoulders and lightly, gently push her away from him, bending over slightly to hold her at arms length. Her frame was so small that his hands practically obscured her torso from view as he gingerly propelled her backwards, a flush creeping up his neck in the rolling wake of her body heat. She blinked at him with wide, unassuming eyes.

"Are you sure you're okay? Your face is all red."

Ralph simply stared at her for a few seconds in spite of himself, marveling at the look of absolute sincerity and innocence on her face. She honestly didn't know what she was doing to him, didn't comprehend the depth of sensation her very proximity was producing inside of him.

_No one like her had ever gotten that close to him before . . . ever held him like that, without the slightest hesitation, without even realizing . . ._

Mike blinked at him again, and Ralph realized how long he had been gawking at her silently with his hands clamped around her shoulders like a turtle shell. He dropped her like a hot coal, straightening up so sharply he nearly bumped the back of his head against the wall again. Mike tilted her head at him curiously, reaching up with one arm and scratching the back of her neck.

"Do you _feel _alright?" she asked again, audibly concerned.

His stomach instantly filled with hot butterflies and the desperate, sudden urge to escape . . . _before he did something crazy, before he grabbed her again, right there, and . . . and . . . . ._ Ralph forced out a nervous laugh as he began inching along the wall, circling slowly around Mike until he was in line with the door again. She turned in place, watching him as he went.

"_Yeah! _Ohh, yeah, no, I'm . . . I'm feeling _fine, _just peachy_." _

Mike tilted her head further, raising her eyebrows.

"_Peachy?" _she parroted, the word clearly new to her.

"Yup! I just, ah . . . it's getting _late, _and I . . . I've already taken up way too much of your evening, so, uh . . . uhhhh . . ._" _Ralph cleared his throat thickly as he backed his way toward the door, groping blindly behind him for the door knob.

Watching him with a blank, faintly dazed stare, Mike walked around him and obligingly twisted the knob on the bottom door half, pulling both halves open and standing aside. The rain had stopped, and the night outside was now bright and clear, a nearly full moon shining coldly through the drifting clouds and illuminating the footpath.

"Ah . . . thanks," Ralph smiled sheepishly.

"No problem," Mike answered, her face still quirked in perplexed curiosity. "So, you're . . . just going back to your game, then?"

Ralph nodded, shuffling slightly on his feet and lowering his gaze to the floor.

"That's right. Heh . . . gotta get back to the old brick pile."

Mike twisted her mouth uncertainly for a second, looking as if she were going to ask him a question, then thinking better of it and giving him a warm, lop-sided smile instead.

"Right. I understand."

There was a brief, pointed silence between them. A soft gust of cool wind blew threw the open door, swaying the ends of her hair and rustling the loose folds of her white smock, and once again, Ralph found himself trapped by her penetrating gaze, lost in the silent hold of her wondering green eyes.

The heat was still radiating through him, pulsing out from his middle and down into the end of his hands and feet, urging him to get out alone into the fresh air where he could calm down, clear his head . . . but then . . . at the same time, whenever he looked back into her face, there was another impulse fighting inside of him . . . a longing to stay, to shut the door behind him again . . . to remain exactly where he was . . .

Ralph blinked, and suddenly Michelangela was holding up her hand, her arm raised straight out to him and her smile playing secretively beneath her piercing eyes.

"Thank you for giving me a name . . . Wreck-It Ralph," she said plainly, her gaze deliberately holding his.

As her words resonated in his ears . . . as she said his name . . . a feeling of warmth and euphoria not quite like anything he had ever experienced before ballooned in Ralph's chest, and all at once he was finding it difficult not to burst out laughing. He practically felt as if his feet had risen off the floor and he was floating in midair.

Grinning back at her, almost dumbstruck with the sudden swell of elation, Ralph reached out and took her hand, squeezing it gently as they shook.

Mike bit her bottom lip and let out a giggling snort, watching her entire arm pump slowly up and down in the incredibly one-sided handshake. Unable to contain it any longer, Ralph laughed back, chuckling and awkwardly drawing his hand back.

They stood there at the open doorway for another moment . . . watching each other.

"Well . . . . . goodbye, Mike," Ralph said plainly, softly, realizing abruptly that there was nothing else to say.

Mike simply shrugged, smiling up at him.

"Goodbye, Ralph."

He looked into her face a final time, taking her in, painting the image of her in his mind . . . wanting to remember the moment, forever, exactly as it was at that instant . . . then, hunching down and stepping sideways, Ralph squeezed through the doorway and straightened up on the front step, standing once more in the cold, empty night air of Masterwork. The moon winked down at him, and Ralph found himself grinning up at it in return.

He looked over his shoulder, and Mike, glowing like a candle, raised her hand in one last shy, slow little wave . . . then closed the door, leaning to peer at him through the crack until the last possible second, the latch clicking shut with a soft sound of finality.

Ralph looked at the closed red door for a long moment . . . and smiled.

All at once, he was brimming with energy, barely able to keep still. He turned to look up at the sky again and took a long, deep inhale, breathing in the chilly night air and letting it out in a strong, satisfied sigh. He jumped off the front step, doing a slight, clumsy two-step as his feet hit the wet, compacted dirt of the footpath, then set off a brisk walk, bouncing exuberantly with every step.

He hadn't made it to the first bend in the path before something inside stopped him, his heart pounding once against his chest in a singular throb, making him turn back to look at the yellow brick house, his breath suddenly growing faster.

Ralph took the ten steps back to the front door at an open run, jumping back up onto the stoop and pounding on the door with his fist without even waiting to catch his breath.

He had scarcely finished knocking the third time, his arm still hanging in midair, when the top half of the door flew open, and Mike was standing there with her arm outstretched and her hand gripping the knob, her lips parted in a half-disbelieving smile and her eyes lighting up as if she'd been waiting for him to come back.

Just slightly out of breath, his eyes gleaming excitedly, Ralph leaned to rest his arm against the post of the door.

"Mike," he said, smiling back down at her, " . . . . . . when can I see you again?"

A/N: SHAMUS CRUMPS, THE FLUFF. THE RIDICULOUS HEAPS OF FLUFF.

Let me know what you guys think. Reviews make me smile!


	14. Chapter 13: It's Just a Matter of Time

A/N: How do I spend my Saturday nights? Staying up until 4:30 to finish a fan fic update, that's how. Yup. Livin' the dream, babies. Just livin' the dream. Hope you like this little doodad . . . I'm noticing a pattern emerging, in which all my chapters are now titled after Owl City lyrics.

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 13: It's Just A Matter of Time_

Mike leaned eagerly over the bottom half of her front door, her head and shoulders sticking far out into the chilly night air, watching as Wreck-It Ralph picked his way carefully back along the moonlit path.

Every five steps or so, almost like clockwork, he would glance back at her, and every time their eyes met again he would smile bashfully and hunch his broad shoulders a bit, and she would snort with another irrepressible giggle and wave with her fingertips. Then, when he reached the first wide bend in the path and turned back, he blinked with a startled look on his face, scanning his eyes searchingly back and forth as if he couldn't see her anymore. He hesitated, looking around confusedly for a few seconds longer, then shrugged to himself and kept walking.

Mike bit her lip at the perplexed look on his face, and was about to raise her voice to call out to him and ask what was wrong when something suddenly stopped her, and she instead she froze with her lips parted and her hand half lifted in the air, staring at him silently through the pale moonlight.

All of a sudden, as she was following the broad shape of his hulking movements with her eyes, as she watched him lumber slowly back toward the stone tunnel, still glancing over his shoulder ever few seconds . . . all of a sudden, her heart began to pound, and a strange, weightless sensation was filling her from head to toe. She closed her fingers into a fist and held the fist over her chest, a feeling unlike any she had felt before slowly overwhelming her as she watched him leave.

When he was just a few steps from the dark mouth of the tunnel, Ralph turned around and gazed in the direction of her house again, a faint, dreamy expression melting over his face. He walked backwards for a few feet, jumping and shaking his head when he backed clumsily into the side of the archway. Mike covered her mouth with her hand and stifled a giggle at the adorable jolt of surprise that rippled through him before he took one last look into the game, then disappeared into the tunnel.

As soon as he was gone and Michelangela found herself staring at the pair of stone arches, her broad smile vanished and an abrupt shiver of fear gripped her. She stood up straight and backed a few inches away from the doorway, her fist closing tighter over her heart.

She didn't know why, but for some reason the mere thought of those tunnels, those yawning black openings, just sitting silently out there in the darkness, chilled her to the very core of her being.

_But __**why**__? _she demanded silently, leaning over to peer through her kitchen window and narrowing her eyes at the dim portals. _She had just seen Ralph go through the one on the left . . . he had told her himself that there was nothing to be afraid of . . . so why? Why did the very sight of them fill her with such dread?_

_She __**knew **__there was a reason . . . there __**had **__to be, she was sure of it . . . but what __**was **__it, and why couldn't she for the life of her remember it?_

It was maddening . . . but at the same time she was fuming and puzzling over the inexplicable mental block, Mike was also finding it very difficult to stay upset in light of everything that had happened that night. She tried to push the fear of the tunnels from her mind, and as she went to close the upper half of her front door she happened to glance up and notice that the frame had a small crack running through it, and both the left and right posts were slightly warped and splintered where her giant, fumbling new friend's shoulders had gotten stuck in it.

Her smile instantly returned, and all thought and worry of the tunnels and her missing memories regarding them vanished like a puff of smoke. Grinning from ear to ear, she softly ran her fingers over the cracked doorposts, chuckling quietly to herself.

_Ralph . . . Wreck-It Ralph._

_She had actually spoken to him, __**touched **__him . . . he was real, another character from another game, somewhere out there in the vastness of the arcade. In one fell swoop he had breached what she had thought was an insurmountable barrier between her world and the world outside, altered her entire conception of reality, opened up possibilities in her life that she hadn't dared to wish for . . . and what's more, he'd done it, simply because he wanted to . . . because __**he **__had wanted to meet __**her**__?_

_Just like that, everything had changed. Just like that, she wasn't all alone anymore._

_She had a friend._

Mike froze with her fingers on the door handle, blinking with a sudden influx of knowledge and vocabulary as the hitherto completely unfamiliar word suddenly popped into her head.

"Friend," she whispered aloud, slowly closing the upper half of the door and turning around to face the interior of her kitchen. For a few seconds she just stood there, her mind silently boggling at the revelation. "I have . . . I have a _friend."_

A glare of copper light suddenly flashed in the corner of her eye, and she grinned as she turned to see her mailbox, now bent and dented nearly beyond recognition, still sitting on her countertop. _In her mind's eye, she saw flashes of enormous hands and wincing, apologetic brown eyes as he had held the box out to her, trying to smile even as the rain drenched him mercilessly . . . _

A slow, budding warmth swelled up inside her even as she thought about it.

"I have a friend . . . and _I have a name," _she whispered to herself, almost too excited to say it out loud._ "Mike."_

Even as she said it, the word worked her mouth into a quirk of happiness she couldn't hold down. Barely able to contain the strange new excitement buoying up inside her, Mike grabbed the bottle of linseed oil from the kitchen table and held it under one arm as she made her way back up the ladder, grinning from ear and ear and unable to resist muttering the two names to herself, back and forth in tandem . . .

"Mike . . . Ralph . . . Mike . . . Wreck-It Ralph . . . Michelangela . . . _Wreck-It Ralph . . . "_

She crawled through the hatch at the top of the ladder and paused, looking for a moment around her studio and setting the bottle of oil down on the side table. She closed the hatch door with her foot, her eyes turned down contemplatively as she dropped into the spindle chair in front of her easel.

"My friend . . . my _friend, _Wreck-It Ralph."

Mike slouched further down in the chair, playing absently with the ends of her hair, and smiled to herself.

_She liked the way that sounded._

Biting her bottom lip gently as she replayed the events of the night over once more in her head, Mike suddenly sat up straight, looked briefly at the abstract collection of blue lines she had been painting earlier that evening before the whole commotion began, and with one bold gesture ripped the heavy sheet of paper off of the large pad leaning on her easel, dropping it on the floor without another thought. Seizing a thick charcoal pencil off of her supply table, she rose to her knees on the chair and began sketching out a rough outline in bold black strokes, still smiling to herself with a warm little glow that refused to fade away.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

On his way in, the walk from one end of the Masterwork tunnel to the other had seemed to take ages . . . on his way out, no sooner had he stepped into the dark mouth of the passage than it seemed he was stumbling back out, blinking almost dizzily in the light of the boarding platform.

As if moving through a dream, his eyes half-lidded with dazed euphoria and barely able to concentrate on his footsteps, Ralph lolled through the portal toward the bright, buzzing activity of the station, his arms hanging limply and his fingertips graze the floor as he swayed haphazardly from side to side.

_He had never felt this way before in his life. He didn't even know what word to use to describe it. Everything in the station . . . the game ports, the benches, the information desks, even the trash cans . . . looked more beautiful than they had ever looked before. Everyone seemed to be smiling. Even the air seemed fresher. He felt like he was fifteen feet tall . . . like if he wanted to, he could jump up and fly._

"Soooo . . . . had a nice visit_, _then, did you?" a stern, distrustful voice suddenly appeared at his side as Ralph passed through the end of the portal into the station. "Stayed on your best behavior at all times, I trust?"

The annoying tone barely even filtering through the fog of his dazed ecstasy, Ralph looked down to see his familiar, balding surge protector peering accusingly at him over the top of his glasses, his hands balled into fists and planted on his hips.

Ralph blinked silently at his old nemesis for a few seconds . . . . then, a huge grin slowly spread across his face. Without a word of warning, he reached out grabbed the SP around the waist with one hand, lifting him clean off the ground with a frightened yelp of surprise and holding him up at eye-level. The SP twitched with alarm, a sudden buzz of electricity and a quick flare of blue light surging between them as they touched.

"You know something, buddy? I owe you an apology. All these years you've been doing a real stand-up job keeping up the security in this place, and the truth is, I haven't always been as polite to you as I could have. Well, from now on, just call me _Mr. Cooperative._ You can count on me to follow the rules with a _smile, _from this moment forward_. _Whaddaya say, partner? Truce?"

Ralph blurted out the entire speech practically in one grinning, enthusiastic breath, and when he had finished he invitingly held up his free hand in front of the stunned surge protector, who had listened to the sudden outburst with a blank, flabbergasted stare. His jaw hanging open, he blinked once at Ralph's sincere, jovial expression, then looked down in disbelief at the enormous, waiting hand. Gradually, the SP relaxed his frightened, gripping fingers from the sides of the hand that was still holding him in the air, King-Kong style.

"Well . . . I . . . that is . . . . . uh . . . a-al_right _then. Uh . . . t, truce!" the SP stammered for a moment, then gingerly took Ralph's hand and shook it, somewhat awkwardly in their strange position.

Ralph set him back down on the floor and clapped him once on the back with a hearty _thump, _knocking his glasses just slightly askew.

"You're gonna be seeing me at this gate again, _real soon," _Ralph laughed good-naturedly, pointing and winking at the baffled surge protector as he walked away backwards from the Masterwork portal. "Until then, you take it easy, pal!"

Slumped over in disbelief, the SP simply straightened his glasses and stared speechlessly at Ralph as if uncertain he was actually there.

Chuckling to himself, Ralph turned around and paused for a moment in the middle of Game Central Station, puffing his chest out with a long, deep inhale and looking around with a bright, eager smile. Almost the next second, he suddenly spotted another familiar figure passing nearby, her combat boots _clunking _loudly and a swath of blonde bangs half hiding her face as she strode casually through the station. Immediately upon seeing her, Ralph spread his arms wide and lit up like a firefly, moving swiftly toward her.

"Heeeyy!" he called out loudly, making Calhoun jump and jerk in his direction with her arms half poised to attack, her eyes widening with surprise when she saw who it was. "If it isn't my favorite space soldier!"

_"Ralph? _What the Sam Hill's gotten into yyoo_oooOOOUUU!" _Calhoun hollered in shock as Ralph attacked her and swept her up in both hands before she could finish speaking, her eyes bugging as he lifted her feet clear off the floor in a bone-crushing bear hug, her arms pinned helplessly to her sides.

"What the _bits?" _she wheezed, the breath sucking from her body as Ralph squeezed her tight enough to creak the couplings of her body armor. "_Son _of a . . . put me down, _Sasquatch!"_

When Ralph didn't respond, Calhoun growled between her teeth, leaned back, and head-butted him flat in the face, her forehead pounding him with a sound like packing meat.

"_Oooohhh, _ho ho!" Ralph half groaned in pain, half laughed at himself as he loosened his grip and dropped the bristling space general back on her feet. He rubbed his nose gingerly for a few seconds, shaking his head and chuckling deep in his throat as Calhoun glared up at him.

"Man . . . remind me not to do _that _again!" he joked, blinking away the hot throb pulsing between his eyes.

"Serves you _right, _you slobbering junk hound! What the flaming _foxhole _did you think you were d - " Calhoun suddenly stopped, her scowl vanishing when Ralph lowered his hand from his face. Her jaw dropped and she squinted at him almost apologetically. " . . . _Ralph, _your . . . holy, _hang, _did I do that?"

"Huh? Do what?" Ralph stared at her dumbly for a moment, then remembered and snorted hysterically, pointing to the dark bruise surrounding his left eye. ". . . ha! What, you mean _this?"_

Calhoun whistled shortly, wincing at him. "Cripes, Wreck-It, that is one nasty-looking shiner. Geez, big guy, I . . . I'm _sorry, _I didn't mean to - "

"Relax, re_lax, _that's not from you," Ralph assured her, smiling and waving her off with one hand. "Ha . . . you think its bad now, you should have seen it an hour ago."

"Ooh, and your _arms, _too?" Calhoun cringed, looking at the faint red welts striped across his forearms.

Ralph glanced at them quickly, then shook his head and laughed. "Thanks for the concern, captain, but really, I'm fine."

"Well, you _look _like somebody put you through the wringer. What the heck have you been _doing _tonight?"

Ralph looked at her for a moment, his elated grin plastered immovably on his face as he leaned toward her, barely even noticing her skeptical, wide-eyed stare and slightly jump of surprise when he grabbed her by the shoulders.

"You'll _never believe it_, Tammy," he whispered in a subdued voice, the excitement threatening the bubble over him at any moment. " . . . _I found her. _I actually really think I may have _found her. _Someone for me, someone _special, _the _ying to my_ _yang!"_

He squeezed her armored shoulders slightly tighter, hunching over and smiling eagerly down at her.

For a few seconds, Calhoun stared at him in complete silence, her face drawn and blank. Then she gave him a weird look, squinting one eye confusedly and sharply cocking her eyebrows.

". . . . aaaaaand . . . . . . . what? She punched you in the eye?"

Ralph groaned, dropping her shoulders and tossing his hands with frustration, but still not losing his impenetrable bubble of excitement.

"NO, of _course _she didn't, she just . . . well . . . _fine, _okay, so she did hit me a couple times with this magic paintbrush thing of hers, but it was an _accident, _alright?"

Calhoun suddenly shot him a sly grin, crossing her arms and looking up at him through her bangs.

"Oh, really. An _accident, _huh? What did you do, Wreck-It . . . tried to make a move on her, and she _nailed ya?" _Calhoun winked suggestively.

Ralph's eyes shot open, a faint, unavoidable flush instantly glowing on his cheeks as the mental image of himself trying to _make a move _on Mike flashed involuntarily through his mind.

"N-no . . . _NO, _it was nothing like that, _okay?" _he muttered irately, turning slightly away from Calhoun to hide his blush.

She only laughed, slugging him affectionately in the arm.

"Ah, come on, I'm just yanking your chain."

Ralph frowned, looking at her sulkily from the corners of his eyes.

"Yeah, well . . . . it _wasn't," _he grumbled under his breath, slightly put off that she had managed to momentarily puncture his emotional high.

Calhoun chuckled good-naturedly, smiling and patting Ralph on the shoulder as she turned him around and began steering him in the direction of Fix-It Felix Jr.

"Walk with me, lover boy, I was just on my way to your game. You can tell me _and _your romance contingent all about it when we get there."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As the little blue train rattled its way through the brick tunnel and came to a stop at the station, Calhoun and Ralph seated respectively in the last two cars, Felix was there waiting for them, sitting patiently on the bench beside the edge of the platform. When he glanced up at the sound of the approaching train, he grinned happily and hopped to his feet with an audible _sproing, _rocking eagerly on his heels as the cars came to a halt.

"Evenin', milady!" he said brightly to Calhoun, holding out his hand to help her out of the car and planting a cheerful kiss on the back of her knuckles. "How was work today?"

Calhoun shrugged as she stepped onto the platform, bending over and returning the kiss on the top of Felix's head. His cheeks glowed responsively.

"Not too bad, all things considered. This younger summer crowd is really starting to get the hang of us . . . _twice _as many gold medals today as yesterday. Janowitz lost a couple limbs on the last game of the day and went all crybaby on us for a while, though, which is why I'm late."

"Aww, no worries, cherry blossom," Felix took her hand warmly, then turned and noticed Ralph, who had finally managed to squeeze out of the train car, stumbling slightly onto the station platform and letting out a long exhale. Calhoun hooked one corner of her mouth in a devious smile and looked down at Felix, jerking her thumb in Ralph's direction.

"Our little Casanova here had a quite a red-letter evening himself, so I hear," she muttered slyly.

Felix raised one eyebrow curiously, then turned and pinned Ralph with a similar smile.

"Is that _so?" _he joked good-naturedly, mimicking his wife's tone. "Well, by all means, little Casanova, tell us about it!"

Ralph rolled his eyes sarcastically, but at the same time couldn't keep the elated grin from sneaking back onto his face.

"Ha, _ha, _you two. No fair ganging up with your _spouse, _you know."

"Aw, come _on_, big guy," Felix smiled encouragingly. "What's the news? I'm dying to hear, handyman's honor."

Ralph hesitated, then gave in and leaned forward, his momentary flare of embarrassment at discussing anything romance-related with his protagonist quickly dwarfed by the unbelievable delirium of happiness he was still reeling with from the unexpected success of the encounter.

"Okay_,_" he murmured excitedly, gesturing toward Felix and Calhoun with both hands._ "_You guys know that new game that was plugged in on Monday, across the aisle between Frogger and Rampage?"

For a split second, Ralph thought he saw the Fix-Itsexchange furtive, winking glances at each other, but it was too fast for him to be certain.

"Why, sure . . . it's that new console with the funny white casing, isn't it?" Felix answered. "What was it called, ah . . . Mister-wink? Mostly-wonk?"

Ralph narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the superintendent's unusually cavalier tone. "It's, it's _Masterwork, _actually . . . . say . . . . why do I get the feeling you two are making fun of me?"

Felix and Calhoun exchanged another stifled, knowing look . . . then simultaneously burst out giggling. Ralph let his hands fall limply to his sides and looked disparagingly from one of them to the other until they had finished laughing.

"Oh, _brother . . . _Ralph, I'm so sorry, but . . . that excited look on your _face! _It was downright adorable!" Felix chuckled, wiping one eye with his finger and shooting him an apologetic smile. "The truth is, Vanellope already told us all about your little crush on that young lady from the new game."

Ralph's eyes bugged, and his shoulders slumped forward so far and so quickly his knuckles hit the ground.

"She WHAT?"

"She said tonight was the night you were finally going to introduce yourself and make your intentions known," Felix explained happily, apparently oblivious to the embarrassed shock written on Ralph's face. " . . . . soooo? Tell us! _How did it go?"_

"Yeah, Ralph. Tell us how she clocked you right in the ol' baby blue," Calhoun joked, folding her arms and smirking lightly.

Felix blinked confusedly, then suddenly widened his eyes at Ralph's shiner, noticing it for the first time. In spite of his still reeling shock and anger at Vanellope, Ralph couldn't help but roll his eyes. _What was it with everyone's delayed reaction to his stupid black eye? _

"Oh, my _land," _Felix whistled, taking a step closer to Ralph and squinting at his face. "That looks _awful. _Here, brother, let me fix that for you."

Ralph sighed, leaning obediently forward so Felix could reach up and give his left eye a sprightly tap with his golden hammer. There was a happy _bid-a-ling! _and the lingering soreness and stiffness of the bruise was instantly gone. Ralph blinked a few times, then straightened up.

"Thanks, Felix," he muttered. "So . . . . let me get this straight. You guys already _knew _about_ . . . . _everything? For _how long?"_

"Since Vanellope barged into our apartment in the middle of the night two days ago and told us," Calhoun grumbled in reply. "It was after the barbecue, when you and everyone else had gone to bed. It had to be two in the morning, and she comes banging on our door like it was some kind of _emergency . . ._ said you'd flipped head over heels for some nutty broad you didn't even know, and she wanted Felix to keep an eye on you until tonight, make sure you didn't 'do anything _stupid.' _Her words."

Ralph silently grit his teeth, clenching his fists and muttering disbelievingly under his breath.

"Oooooh, just _wait _'til I get my hands on that little . . . "

"I _thought _it seemed like something funny had gotten into you that night at the barbecue," Felix grinned at Ralph knowingly, ignoring his angry muttering. "_So, _come on, Ralph, don't keep us in suspense! How did it _go?"_

Ralph paused, suddenly forgetting to be upset with Vanellope as the elating memory of the past hour abruptly returned to him.

"Well . . . . _actually, _it went . . . sort of _great."_

Felix stared at him for a moment, the open-mouthed smile growing wider on his face before he gave a jubilant hoot of laughter of and slapped his knee.

"_Ha! _Well, what do you know about _that_, huh? That's wonderful, Ralph! Congratulations! Didn't I tell you, buddy? Didn't I tell you, you just had to keep looking?"

Ralph couldn't help but smile at his protagonist.

"Yeah, you told me," he admitted warmly. "People _can _surprise you."

Felix laughed again, taking his blue cap off and running one hand through his hair as he shook his head. Calhoun, her arms still crossed, gave Ralph an encouraging smile that was actually almost sweet.

"Looks like perseverance paid off," she remarked, nodding towards the Niceland apartment building and stepping off the platform. Ralph and Felix followed her, the three of them walking slowly across the grass, talking as they went. "So spill, big man, who is the new bird? What's her name?"

"Her name is Michela . . . I mean . . . _Mike. _She likes to go by Mike."

Calhoun and Felix simultaneously raised their eyebrows at him, but didn't say anything. Ralph cleared his throat under their blank stares.

"Yeah . . . anyway, Masterwork is some kind of painting puzzle game, and she's an artist. She . . . still seems a little confused about certain things, but she's a fast learner . . . got some pretty good reflexes, too," Ralph muttered, testing his left eye one more time with a couple of winks. "You two want to hear something _weird, _though? She's the _only character _in her game."

The Fix-Its both stopped in their tracks, pausing for a few seconds and blinking at Ralph with incredulous stares before slowly catching up to him again.

"You mean . . . the _only, _only character?" Felix asked, his brow raising in surprise.

"Naah, that can't be right," Calhoun muttered, shaking her head. "No game has a _single _character. That's absurd."

"Absurd or not, it's _true," _Ralph insisted. "I could hardly believe it myself, but . . . you should have seen her, guys. When I knocked on her door, the way she _looked _at me . . . I think I really was the first other person she'd even seen, face to face."

There was a brief silence.

"So . . . was that when she punched you in the eye?" Felix tested cautiously.

Ralph shot him a look, then groaned and continued walking. "_No, _for the last time, she did _not _punch me in the eye! You weren't there, you wouldn't understand . . . she's _tiny, _for one thing. At least a third of her is _hair, _and the rest of her is so little and delicate, she'd probably break a bone if she punched anything . . . her hands especially, they're so _small . . . _so . . . small, and . . . warm, and . . . . .soft . . . . . and when she holds things, when . . . when she touches things . . . when she touches _you_ . . . when she _looks _at you with those _eyes_ . . . those big, green . . . it's like . . . like she _knows _you, even though she barely knows herself, it's like she can _see _straight into you . . . like knows what you're thinking, what you . . . you . . . "

Ralph slowed to a stop in front of the East Niceland gate, abruptly realizing that he'd been talking out loud the entire time. Suddenly rooted to the spot, his stomach feeling as if it had dropped into the soles of his feet, Ralph slowly, reluctantly looked over his shoulder at Felix and Calhoun. They had stopped a few feet behind him and were staring with combined expressions of surprise and increasingly understanding amusement. Ralph swallowed thickly.

"I've . . . said too much, haven't I?" he muttered in defeat, knowing there was no taking it back now.

To their credit, the Fix-Its didn't hold it over him for long. They exchanged a brief, final humorous look, then caught up with him and turned him helpfully through the East Niceland arch, walking him toward his house with one of them on either side of him.

"Don't be em_barr_assed, Ralph. So you like her! There's nothing wrong with that," Felix insisted, patting him encouragingly on the arm.

Ralph could only mumble indiscernibly in reply, his cheeks feeling as if they might never be able to keep their regular temperature again after the night he'd been through.

"Of course there isn't," Calhoun chimed in, her normally gruff voice almost sounding strange when she was trying to be sincerely comforting. "So you and the new fish really hit it off! That's _great, _Wreck-It. Tell me, when do we get to meet this big-eyed, little-handed _Mike _character?"

Ralph froze on the stoop of his brick shack with his hand on the door-knob, his mouth working soundlessly for a moment. Instantly he heard Michelangela's small, frightened voice, echoing in the back of his mind . . .

_I . . . I don't think I want to leave my game._

_Those tunnels . . . I don't like those tunnels._

Ralph winced gingerly, trying to find the right words as he slowly pulled open his front door.

"Ah . . . I'm not exactly sure about that . . . see . . . it's kind of a complicated - "

"SURPRISE!"

Ralph yelped and started violently as a small burst of confetti and a loud, familiar squawk exploded in his face the moment he opened the door of his shack. The handful of glittery, brightly colored bits of paper floated down around him, landing on his head and shoulders, and after a moment of tensed up shock he cracked one eye open and looked down toward the source of the shrill yell.

Vanellope stood there grinning at him, confetti still stuck to her hands and tracked all around the floor of his house.

Ralph stared blankly for a few seconds, then narrowed his eyes at her. He glared over his shoulder at Felix and Calhoun.

"You knew about this," he said flatly.

They shrugged at him in unison, smiling unapologetically.

"Guilty!" Felix admitted, holding his hands up. "What can I say, Ralph? She swore us to secrecy."

Ralph simply shook his head and turned to look back at Vanellope, pinning her with an un-amused glower.

"So, you blabber-mouthed little syrup stain," he muttered at her irately, taking one step into his house and brushing some of the confetti from his face. "First you run around telling everyone about my . . . about . . . _you know what . . . _and then, you sneak into my house so you can ambush me with . . . _what, _exactly?"

Her grin never flickering for an instant, Vanellope lowered her eyelids coolly at him and hopped backwards into the middle of the small room, pointing one arm straight up over her head. Ralph begrudgingly followed her gesture with his eyes . . . then stopped, his scowl abruptly melting when he looked up and noticed what was hanging there, suspended from the ceiling.

Vanellope shrugged, crossing her arms and smiling satisfactorily at his slowly softening expression.

"Hey, I wanted to have something ready in case you needed cheering up . . . . _or, _conversely, in case you had something to celebrate!"

Hanging from two balls of chewing gum stuck to Ralph's ceiling was a pink banner, a long, thin strip of taffy that filled the interior of his small cottage with an overwhelming smell of artificial strawberry. On it, in messy, glittery green lettering, were painted the words, _"You are one terrific bad guy."_

His heart suddenly overflowing, tinged heavily with a sting of guilt at having been angry with her, Ralph looked down at his grinning, pink-nosed little friend, who was beaming up at him with a wild gleam of anticipation dancing in her hazel eyes. She caught Ralph's gaze and held it eagerly, leaning forward and holding out her hands.

"_So?" _she demanded finally. "Which is it, cheer up, or _celebrate?"_

The warmth inside him almost threatening to well up and escape through his eyes, Ralph simply smiled back at her, and without saying a word, he dropped down onto one knee in front of her and scooped her up before she could speak, hugging her against his chest and holding her gently with both hands over his heart. She in return spread her arms over his chest and hugged him back, burying her face and fisting her tiny hands in the fabric of his shirt. For a brief moment, they were completely silent.

Then, Vanellope leaned back to look him in the eye, the excitement still flashing behind her smile, but now mingled with something else, something softer and understanding in a way that required no explanation.

"Well . . . alright, then, Stinkbrain," she said quietly, reaching up one hand and nudging him playfully on the jaw with her knuckles. "Why don't you tell me what she's like, already?"

A/N: ". . . smiling satisfactorily at his slowly softening expression." Wow. Say that business five times fast.

This chapter is quite a bit shorter than the last few, which I regret, but then again I sort of like to book-end chapters around a particular scene or isolated segment of the story that I want to finish . . . and, unfortunately, some of those segments are brief ( and overflowing with sap, as is this one! ). Anyway, let me know what you think! Criticism is always welcome.


	15. Chapter 14: With Friends Like These

A/N; SERIOUSLY THOUGH . . . . I am _way _too addicted to my own story. I literally can't make myself stop writing. Real world responsibilities are being pushed to the wayside. And yet, I have no plans to stop.

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted concepts or characters herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 14: With Friends Like These . . . . _

" . . . and then, well . . . . then, we just said goodbye, and . . . I _left_."

Vanellope and Felix, who had been leaning eagerly toward Ralph and listening in rapt attention throughout the duration of his story, each exhaled slowly and relaxed back in their chairs, blinking after the long stretch of captivated silence.

_"Wow," _Felix whistled, folding his arms thoughtfully. "That . . . sounds like quite the introduction."

Calhoun, who had been slouched in her chair, listening only half interestedly while picking her teeth with one foot propped up on Ralph's table, flicked her toothpick across the room and put her hands behind her head, raising one eyebrow suggestively in Ralph's direction.

"I'll say," she muttered. "Sounds to me like this girl is a few bullets short of a magazine, if you catch my drift."

Ralph lowered his brow at her unappreciatively, but didn't respond. The four of them were seated around the little dining table in the center of his one-roomed shack, picking absently at the remains of the congratulatory ( or _consolatory, _as it might have been ) cake that Vanellope had brought with her. Pieces of Calhoun's body armor were piled on the floor next to her chair, her underclothes wrinkled and sweat-stained from the long day.

"Mmmm . . . " Vanellope hummed thoughtfully for a second. "You know . . . I hate to say it, Ralph, but . . . for once, I think I agree with Shoot-'Em-Up Sally."

Ralph shot her an incredulous glare. "_What? _You _too, _kid? How can you say that?"

"Easy!" Vanellope held her hands out in a calming gesture. "I'm not saying you shouldn't _see her _again, it's just . . . I mean . . . think about it, Ralph. It doesn't make any sense. How could she not know how to leave her game? How could she not know she had a _kitchen_ . . . for cripes' sake, Ralph, how could she not know her own _name? _That kind of stuff is programmed straight into our code from the beginning_, _not knowing it is like . . . like . . . not knowing how to _breathe!"_

"It . . . _does _seem a little fishy, doesn't it?" Felix joined in reluctantly.

Ralph flashed his eyes disbelievingly around the table at each of his three friends in turn.

"I can't believe you guys are actually . . . . _uuurrggh!" _he growled in frustration, running his hands through his hair and sitting up straight. "Look, I know _something_ isn't right with her, okay? I admit it! But it's not just _Mike . . . _I told you, her house was disappearing, her whole game was _empty _except for her, and plus . . . I don't know, it just . . . you just won't understand unless you go there yourselves, al_right? _There's something wrong with her whole _game_ . . . something in the _air . . ._ I can't explain it yet, okay? It's just the way things _are_ there. It isn't _Mike's fault."_

Vanellope rolled her eyes exasperatedly and pushed her bangs out of her forehead.

"Nobody _said it was, _dummy! All we're saying is that maybe you should be careful, _comprende? _Who _know_ what could be wrong with this crazy lady?"

Ralph narrowed his eyes at her, a small blaze of anger actually flaring up in his belly. He clenched one fist on the table, forcing himself to swallow it back down.

"Oh, yeah? Something like, I don't know . . . maybe she has a _glitch?" _

Vanellope quickly opened her mouth to retort . . . then stopped, a flicker of shame passing over her face. She closed her mouth quickly and looked guiltily down at the table. Ralph softened his gaze toward her, sighing and rubbing one hand over his eyes.

"Look . . . . I know you guys mean well, alright? But just . . . _try _to understand," he looked back up at them, and each of them abruptly fell silent, their eyes widening at the sudden seriousness written on his face. "I've . . . . . I've never felt this way about anyone before. I'm . . . con_fused, _and . . . _excited,_ at the same time, and I'm not sure what to do, but . . . something about Mike, she just . . . _just . . . "_

Ralph trailed off, suddenly intensely aware of the six eyes glued to him with varying expressions of sympathy and encouragement.

" . . . she makes you _happy," _Felix finished for him, smiling softly.

Ralph hesitated, pinned under the unblinking stares, a moment longer . . . then, swallowing a cotton-dry lump in his throat, he looked down at the table and nodded shyly.

"Yeah. She . . . does."

"Then that's all that matters!" Felix said with a prompt, finite shrug. "We're your friends, brother. All we want is what's best for you."

Vanellope's small hand reached across the table and touched his arm.

"I'm sorry, Ralph," she said quietly when he looked up at her. "I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

The little quiver of her voice yanked immediately on his heartstrings, the way it never, _ever _failed to do when she was genuinely sorry about something . . . when that sad little gleam flashed in her wide eyes . . . and Ralph, like always, simply couldn't stay angry with her. He exhaled slowly in frustration, warmly hooking one corner of his mouth at her.

"Aa_aahh . . . _give it a rest, President puppy-dog eyes," he muttered. That coaxed her smile back.

Calhoun, who had been looking back and forth between the three of them with an increasingly uncomfortable frown throughout the various displays of emotion, let out a sudden, half-hearted growl and waved them off with her hands, pushing her chair back unceremoniously and rising to her feet.

"You people are worse than a soap opera," she muttered, stuffing the pieces of her armor under one arm and then straightening up to pin Ralph with a no-nonsense stare. "Listen, Wreck-It. It's not _complicated_. If you _like _the girl, then go to her game and _tell her, _glitch or no glitch . . . and if you _don't, _then quit your blubbering and let the rest of us get _on_ with our lives!"

She stomped to the door, pausing just briefly to give Ralph a pointed sock in the arm, then wrenched open the door and shot one last glower over her shoulder at the stunned trio.

"I don't know about the rest of you chicklets_, _but _I'm _going to go get some sleep. Felix, lock the door when you get home."

She gave a final snort through her teeth, then slammed the door shut behind her.

For a few seconds, the three of them stared blankly after her, Ralph frowning and rubbing the spot on his arm where she'd punched him. Then, he and Vanellope turned to look at Felix.

"Aaaaah . . . ha ha . . ." Felix smiled, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. " . . . that's just her way of saying she's happy for you, Ralph."

"She does have a _point, _though," Vanellope consented, glancing at Ralph from the corners of her eyes. "If _Masterwuss _Mike really means that much to you, you should probably just come out and tell her . . . you know, instead of sneaking around breaking her mailboxes and scaring the snot out of her."

"_Would ya just - _ooh, hoo hoooo," Ralph muttered, holding back an angry retort and shaking his finger at her briefly. "_Listen, _sugar cube, I think I've had about enough of _your _advice for a while. I _just met her, _I'm not about to go spouting off a bunch of mushy junk! I was lucky to convince her to _talk _to me, let alone -"

"But you are going to _see _her again, aren't you?" Felix interrupted concernedly.

"Of course I am!" Ralph retorted, growing increasingly annoyed at the busy-body attitude his friends were taking to the situation. "We made another date for tomorrow night!"

The words blurted out before he knew what he was saying. Felix and Vanellope both blinked in surprise for a split second, then glanced at each other and lit up with coy smiles.

"Reeeaaally?" Vanelloped drawled deviously, resting her chin on her hand. "Another_ what, now?"_

"Jeepers, _that _was fast," Felix couldn't help snickering.

Ralph froze, his eyes bugging as he abruptly realized what he had just said.

"Wait, _wait, _that's not what I meant!" he stammered hastily. "It _wasn't _a d . . . a d, d-d . . ."

"_Date?" _Vanellope grinned. "No, of course not. Not like it's going to be _tomorrow."_

Felix stifled a laugh behind his hand. Ralph lowered his brow crossly at both of them as they choked and snickered.

"Cut it out. It is NOT A DATE, you guys. I just . . . mis_spoke."_

"Oh, really? Then can _I _come with you tomorrow?" Vanellope asked craftily, leaning towards him. "I'm dying to meet her, Ralph . . . oh, and wouldn't she just _love _some of the stories I could tell her about _you! _Does she know, for example, that you've only brushed your teeth _once _in thirty-one years?"

"Does . . . hee hee, umm . . . does she know . . . your favorite pie is _rhubarb?" _Felix chuckled innocently as he tried to join in on the ribbing, obviously having a difficult time coming up with anything less than perfectly nice to say.

"Does she know you still sleep with bricks under your pillow?"

"Does she know . . . um . . . does she know you hate escalators?"

"Wait, _wait, _I've got the winner," Vanellope snickered, shushing Felix with her hands. "Does she know he can only drink _fountain_ _soda, _because the bottled kind always makes him -"

"OH, kay!" Ralph interrupted heatedly, slamming both hands on the table and standing up. "I think it's time now for everyone to _get out of my house."_

"Awww, don't be _sore, _brother!" Felix chortled good-naturedly. "We're just pulling your leg is all!"

Ralph frowned un-amusedly and pointed one arm straight toward the door.

"OUT."

Felix chuckled once more, shaking his head as he got up from the table.

"I have to be getting home to Tammy, anyway," he murmured agreeably, saluting Ralph as he headed for the door. Ralph followed him grumpily with half-lidded eyes. "Thanks a heap for the cake and the company, Miss Von Schweetz . . . and try not to be _too _hard on our poor friend here. I think he's had quite a night already!"

"Good NIGHT, _Felix_," Ralph gritted through clenched teeth. The bubbly superintendent only smiled and laughed again, giving another friendly wave goodbye as he closed the door behind him.

Vanellope sniggered once at the door, then looked back at Ralph, who was glaring heavily at her with his arms crossed. She only giggled, pushing herself up with her hands to sit on the edge of the table.

"Oh, lighten _up, _you big baby," she teased, clearly pleased with herself as she pulled a dab of frosting off of the cake remains and sucked it from her fingertip. "You know I'm just _kidding."_

Ralph's brow only lowered further. "Isn't it past your _bedtime, _princess?"

She rolled her eyes and blew a short raspberry at him. "Why? _You're _the one who's getting cranky."

Ralph groaned in defeat, tossing his hands helplessly and flopping back down on the chair, slouching with an exasperated sigh. Sucking the last bit of frosting from her finger with a loud _pop, _Vanellope hopped to her feet on the table, bounced the short distance across it, and jumped unceremoniously onto Ralph's lap, making him sit up straighter and narrow his eyes at her in annoyance.

"Come on_, _big guy, don't be that way," she said sweetly, batting her eyes at him and patting her hand on his stomach. "We only tease because we really are _happy _for you."

Ralph _hmphed _gruffly in reply, looking down at her adorable blinking and shaking his head. "You can be a major pain in the rump, you know that?"

"Aw, you're just _saying that," _she crooned sappily, and Ralph couldn't help cracking a smile. "For real, though . . . _when_ do we get to meet her, Ralph? I have to make sure she's _good_ enough for you, don't I?"

Ralph chuckled in spite of himself, rubbing the top of her head with one hand as his gaze lifted thoughtfully off into the distance.

"Soon, kid . . . I mean . . . I _hope, _soon. I'm a little new at this, so you're gonna have to promise not to rush me. The first step is going to be convincing her to leave her game _at all. _For some reason, she's still just so _scared _of the idea . . ."

"Well then, what if _we _go in to see _her?" _Vanellope suggested hopefully, rocking slightly back and forth on his knee.

Ralph scrunched one half of his face, shaking his head dubiously.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea, kid. You better just give me a little more time to ease her into it."

Vanellope lowered her eyelids at him with a cunning grin. "Oh_, _right . . . . on your _date _tomorrow. I forgot."

Ralph clenched his teeth, refusing to take the bait and pushing down the flare of warmth in his cheeks. Instead he picked Vanellope up off his knee and set her down on the floor, standing up and pushing his chair in to the table.

"Seriously, kid. I think it's time for you to go home and get to bed."

Vanellope sagged her shoulders, her smile melting into a sad, pouting frown. "Aw, but _Ralph, _I don't _wanna _go home. I feel like I've barely seen you all week!"

Ralph blinked flatly. "I saw you _two days ago."_

"Yeah, but you were still in romance-hypno mode, that barely counts! Come _on, _Ralph, are you really going to make a _little girl _go walking home alone through Game Central Station at this time of night?" she demanded, somehow managing to make her big, dewy eyes grow even bigger, folding her hands in front of her heart and pouting her lips at him with a barely audibly whimper.

Ralph simply stared wearily at her for a few seconds, biting back the urge to remind her that she'd had no problem traversing the station alone in the middle of the night to tell Felix and Calhoun all about his personal business. After a few grudging moments, he heaved a long, defeated sigh, once again unable to say no to her sad, blinking doe-eyes.

"Fine," he grumbled, massaging his forehead with one hand and slumping his shoulders exhaustedly. "You can stay the night."

"Yyyyyyiipp_eeee!" _Vanellope squealed, pumping one fist triumphantly and doing a gleeful spin in the air. She took of at a run, pinging and ricocheting a few times around the tiny room before zooming like a mint-colored comet into Ralph's bed, bouncing on the mattress and mussing the blankets and giggling raucously to herself.

Ralph sighed and shook his head again, but at the same time was unable to keep the warm grin from spreading on his face. Vanellope burrowed under the blankets like a gopher and circled around the bed a few times before popping her face out again, beaming at him with another giggling snort.

Ralph smiled back at her, shutting off the single lamp that hung over the table and shuffling his way toward the bed through the semi-darkness.

"Move over before I squash you, you rotten little bed-bug," he mumbled, failing in his attempt to sound bedraggled and annoyed.

Vanellope squeaked with laughter as he pushed her aside with one hand, rolling her to the other edge of the bed and then plopping down himself with a heavy exhale, the crude bed frame creaking and bowing sharply under his weight. He sat there blinking groggily for a moment, surprised at how genuinely tired he suddenly was. With a slow, loud yawn, he stretched both arms over his head, scratched one underarm a few times, then flopped wearily down onto his back, the mattress bouncing a couple times more and then lying still.

Almost immediately, Vanellope began to snicker quietly, squirming around and nudging his side with her toes. Ralph opened his eyes in the darkness and groaned.

_He should have known better . . . . after all that sugar she had earlier? _

"Come _on, _kid," he muttered pleadingly. "Don't make me regret this. The least you could do is take your _shoes _off."

She giggled again, but obediently wriggled around for a moment and then flung her tiny pair of boots off the end of the bed. They hit the wooden floorboards with a soft _clunk._

For about thirty seconds, everything was quiet. Ralph slowly, cautiously let his eyes close again, propping one arm up behind his head and draping the other across his stomach, the silence gradually creeping up around him like a warm blanket as his eyelids grew heavier and heavier . . .

"Ralph?" Vanellope, directly on cue, piped up loudly, jolting him awake again. Ralph moaned miserably and covered his eyes with one hand.

"For crying out _loud, _Vanellope, I'm _tired! _What _is it?"_

She was silent for a moment, hidden somewhere in the heap of blankets beside him. The seconds ticked slowly by, and then she shifted again, softly rustling the sheets as she inched higher up towards the pillows.

"Nevermind," she said quietly, her voice suddenly serious and introspective.

Ralph opened one eye, peeking curiously in her direction at the sudden mood shift, but her face was hidden in the shadowy darkness. He gave another short, weary sigh, and closed his eyes again, settling back for what he hoped was the last time.

For another moment, everything was still.

Then . . . without any noise at all . . . his eyes suddenly blinked open again as he felt the gentle weight of little hands and feet crawling over him. With a tiny, almost inaudible grunt of effort, Vanellope lifted his arm up just high enough for her to wriggle underneath it, squeezing through on her stomach and curling up on top of his chest.

For a few seconds, Ralph lay completely motionless, his eyes wide and staring up at the dark ceiling of his little shack, his heart beating slightly faster and warmth filling him from head to toe.

Then, without speaking, he lifted one hand and draped it over Vanellope like a blanket, covering her from the neck down. She snuggled closer under the warmth, nuzzling over his heart for just a moment and muttering something indiscernible under her breath . . . and the next minute, she was fast asleep.

Ralph smiled into the darkness, his eyelids slowly drooping as the comfortable warmth gradually overtook him. The last thing he saw in his mind's eye before finally drifting off into unconsciousness was a square of golden light, glowing in a plane of total blackness in his imagination . . . and through the square, watching him with her curious, ever-searching eyes and her timid smile, was Mike, waving shyly to him as he slowly walked away.

_Mike . . ._

_Maybe, just once . . . if only to himself, if only in a whisper, now that there was no one awake to hear . . . maybe, once, he could say it._

"Tomorrow . . . on . . . _our date," _he muttered under his breath, so quietly he almost wasn't sure he had heard it himself.

For the last fleeting instant before he fell asleep, Ralph thought . . . he wasn't sure, but he _thought . . . _he felt Vanellope curl just slightly closer to him, and then everything was still.

A/N: Geez, oh man. I think the truth is that I really, really just wanted to write more Ralph/Vanellope fluff, and I'll be hanged if I have to wait for an opportune moment to work it in. Hence, the previous two little baby-sized excuses for chapters shoe-horned into the plot.

I absolutely promise the next chapter will be more substantial . . . of course this also means it will take a little longer, but I hope it will be worth it. Reviews make me smile!


	16. Chapter 15: Let Me In, Unlock the Door

A/N; Alright, so here's the deal. This chapter sort of got away from me a little bit and went in a direction I didn't really expect . . . as a result, I decided to finish it off early and post it sooner than I planned. The question I want to ask is this . . . as readers, do you guys prefer getting slightly shorter chapters ( like 7,000 words or less ) a little more often, or getting _long, _sprawling chapters ( like 10,000 words or more ) _less _often? Because sometimes, like with this one, I'll keep a chapter shorter so I can post it sooner, and I usually end up wondering later if that was a mistake. So, after you give this installment the once-over, if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to hear your preferences on this matter.

Also, on a totally unrelated note, one very perceptive reviewer ( shout-outs to you, **Chloe-Josephine** ;) brought a particular song to my attention that I think works pretty wonderfully for Ralph and Mike's relationship, namely in chapters 11 and 12, as well as this one . . . the song is "Til Kingdom Come," by Coldplay, with which you are all probably better acquainted than I, I myself being embarrassingly culturally antiquated and all. Give it a listen, why not! ( it's also the source of this chapter's title ).

Ok, I'll shut up now . . . enjoy the chapter!

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted concepts or characters mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 15: Let Me In, Unlock the Door_

For the first time in her short life, Michelangela was actually excited to see Mr. Litwak finally clearing out the arcade at the end of the day on Thursday. For the first time, she was able to watch the last few straggling children walk past her console toward the doors without the slightest pang of sadness or regret . . . . . because that night, for the first time, she knew that she wasn't going to be alone after they had gone.

The very instant after the lights had switched off and she was certain she had heard the definitive jingle of keys and the _click_ of the front doors locking, Mike let out a tiny squeal of exhilaration and bounced once on her toes, dashing away from the game screen as it began to retract into the wall and dropping her palette and brushes carelessly on her work desk. She threw open the doors of the wardrobe on the west wall of her studio and rifled quickly through the row of white smocks hanging there, pulling one down and exchanging it for the now paint-splattered one she had worn throughout the work day.

Jumping over the piles of papers, rags, tubes of paint, and other odds and ends that had accumulated around her easel since last night, Mike hooked her toe expertly on the edge of the trap door and flipped it open with her foot, jumping toes first and pencil-straight through the dark hole without a second's hesitation, catching herself on the outer poles of the ladder and sliding down to the bottom. As soon as her bare feet hit the hardwood of the floor, she clapped her hands twice over her shoulder and all the lights in the room flickered on responsively.

She had known about the existence of her kitchen for less than a full day, but already it felt as if she had been using it for years, as if she'd never been without it in her life. She almost had trouble still believing that less than twenty-four hours earlier, every inch of the room had been absolutely foreign to her . . . now, as she sashayed around the countertop island and pulled things out of drawers without even having to look at them, the whole room and everything in it seemed to turn obediently around her in perfect rhythm, like the gears of a clock. Humming the tune of a German aria that had been stuck in her head all day ( the first random, techno-classical remix that her game had played that morning was a segment of _Die Zauberflöte, _the lyrics to which she now knew by heart ), Mike retrieved the cotton tablecloth from its place in the china cabinet, beaming and doing a little twirl with it as she waltzed back to the table and laid it neatly over the chair nearest to the door.

Then, she hurried back to the countertop and bent over to check her reflection in the dented face of her copper mailbox, which she had polished clean and propped up beside a sugar canister the night before. She studied her face quickly on the fuzzily reflective surface, squinting and licking her thumb to rub off a spot of green paint that had splattered above her eyebrow. She tried a few times to run her fingers through the dense, tangled thicket of her hair, but quickly determined that it was a futile effort, settling instead for a couple stiff shakes of her head to whip the bangs out of her eyes.

Her heart now beating too rapidly and her stomach fluttering with too much excitement to hum anymore, Mike gave her reflection a final nod of respectability and darted to the large corner window on the front wall of her house, leaning anxiously against the glass and peering out at the twin tunnels, sitting there inconspicuously across her long stretch of lawn, embedded in the wall of forest.

For a full five minutes, she just stood there and waited, her breath fogging the glass as she stared impatiently at the stone archway on the left, practically without blinking.

After a long moment of stillness and quiet, she turned her head to glance quickly at the wooden cuckoo clock mounted on the wall. It read fifteen minutes past seven.

_Ralph had said he would be there at eight o'clock sharp, one hour after the arcade closed_.

Mike looked back at the tunnels, laying her hands flat on the glass and biting her lips in anticipation. She waited again, her fingers slowly curling and sliding down the glass, for as long as she could stand . . . then whipped back to look at the clock again.

Eighteen minutes past seven.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It was almost an hour past closing time on Thursday evening . . . _just minutes before their agreed meeting time in Masterwork_ . . . as Ralph lumbered heavily through the Fix-It Felix game portal and fazed into Game Central station, his head hanging lower over his shoulders than usual and the small of his back aching just slightly from hunching too far forward in his typical cramped seat on the train. He barely glanced up at the somewhat busier-than-usual hubbub of the station, his mind completely consumed with a combination of excitement and something almost resembling terror. He exhaled nervously to himself as he made his way through the transit, trying ( and failing ) for at least the tenth time in as many minutes to calm the frenzied swarm of butterflies in his stomach.

Ralph couldn't remember the last time he'd had a more nerve-wracking day.

From the minute he'd woken up that morning with Vanellope's pony-tail practically suffocating him ( she'd crawled up onto to his shoulder and nestled her face into the crook of his neck at some point in the night . . . . when he grumbled about it, she just stuck her tongue out and told him it was because the smell of his armpits kept waking her up ) until the minute the lights in the arcade finally switched off, he hadn't been able to stop thinking about the specter of his impending date, not even for a second.

Things hadn't _started off _too badly . . . he had managed to get Vanellope on the train in time to be back in her game before the arcade opened, then he'd gone and hunkered down in the brick pile to wait for the first game of the day, just like always. Up until that point, he had scarcely been able to feel anything about the coming evening apart from a constant buzz of dazed, disbelieving excitement, humming through him like a steady current of electricity . . . _it really was happening, he was going to see her again . . . Mike had __**agreed **__to see him again, __**on purpose **__. . . for the first time in his life, he had a date. __**He**__, Wreck-It Ralph . . . the hot-tempered, ham-fisted bad guy__who had gone thirty years without making a single real friend, much less a __**lady **__friend . . . . was actually going to a __**real **__**date, **__with a __**real woman**__ . . . ._

And it was with that thought, as he sat waiting impatiently on his stump for the sound of the quarter alert, that the trouble started. As soon as he dared to allow the word _date _to enter his thoughts . . . the nagging, doubtful voices at the back of his mind instantly piped up and began to worry at him, biting and wheedling until it was almost more than he could manage to keep his concentration when the first quarter alarm finally sounded.

_. . . but just because she agreed to see you again doesn't exactly make it a __**date, **__does it?_

_Let's be realistic . . . she just met __you __**yesterday**__, and she's practically still afraid of her own shadow. What do you really think is going to happen if you show up there tonight and start acting like this is a __**date**__?_

_Besides . . . how do you know if she really even __**likes**__ you?_

_It was sheer chance that you just happened to be the first person to go into her game, the first person she ever __**met**__. Naturally she was excited, she'd be excited to have __**anyone **__at all to talk to . . . even you._

_But what's going to happen when she finally does agree to leave her game, or when someone else decides to go in and visit her? What's going to happen when she has __**other**__ people to talk to, other people to spend time with . . . what happens when she finds out she has a __**choice**__,__between them . . . and you?_

_Do you really think she'll choose you?_

Over and over, the pessimistic voices would grate at him, pushing him further and further down a spiral of self-doubt until he was so nervous he was practically ready to cancel the whole thing . . . but then, he would force himself to remember the way Mike had looked at him when he'd turned around and knocked on her door a second time to make the date in the first place. She had answered immediately, almost like she'd been _waiting_ for him, like she'd been _hoping _he would come back again . . . he forced himself to remember the smile, the eager little gleam in her eyes . . . and just like that, he was excited again. Excited to the point of _distraction . . ._ like on the tenth game of the day, when instead of holding up his arms and shouting, _"I'M GONNA WRECK IT!", _he had, without even thinking, held up both arms ( with a _smile, _no less ) and shouted, as if in defiance of his own subconscious,

"I CAN _DO THIS!"_

It wasn't until he noticed the quizzical stare of confusion on the gamer's face and the stunned, horrified looks that Felix and all of the Nicelanders were shooting at him from the other side of the game screen that Ralph realized what he'd done. Swallowing a sharp cringe of embarrassment, he'd done his best to knuckle down and power through the rest of the game with absolute focus, unconsciously pounding the floor of the penthouse with twice as much anger and force as was necessary . . . then, by the end of the tenth game, the nagging voices had started up again, and the cycle started all over. By the end of the day, he had run the full gamut of his feelings so many times over that they had finally all just blurred together into a single, garbled ball of emotional exhaustion that sat at the bottom of his gut like a rock, practically making him nauseous.

It was with that feeling of slight queasiness that he finally arrived at the Masterwork portal, the digital clock at the far end of the transit marking ten minutes remaining until he was supposed to meet Mike. Last night when he had gone back to arrange the meeting with her, he had wisely reconsidered his gut impulses and suggested eight o'clock, rather than immediately after the closing of the arcade, knowing that it would probably take a bit of time for him to compose himself before going out on the . . . _date. _What he didn't anticipate was that one hour wouldn't be long enough . . . that the hour he would spend pacing around the dump after work trying to psyche himself into a state of calm would in fact only serve to make him, if possible, even _more _nervous than when he'd started.

Ralph paused just outside the gate, taking a deep breath to steady himself and mentally forcing his excited, twitching nerves to be still, firmly pushing all thought of the previous eleven hours to the back of his mind.

"Okay . . . just _calm, down," _he ordered himself quietly, closing his eyes and muttering just barely above a whisper. "There is _nothing _to be nervous about. Don't think of this as a _date . . . _it's just a normal, friendly meeting between new acquaintances. No big deal. So just _get it _together, go in there, and . . . _be yourself."_

He opened his eyes and glanced briefly up at the scrolling title screen, letting the breath out in a slow, deliberate exhale.

"_No big deal_," he murmured unconvincingly, picking up his feet . . . which felt abruptly heavier than usual . . . and walking through the game portal.

As he made his way toward the dark opening of the passageway, Ralph peered once back over his shoulder with a slight frown of surprise that he hadn't been stopped, or even spoken to, by the surge protector . . . in fact, come to think of it, he hadn't noticed a single one of the blue security guards anywhere in the station at all that evening. He pondered the uncharacteristic absence curiously for a few seconds . . . then shrugged, brushing it off and forgetting about it as he disappeared into the shadowy Masterwork passageway.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The second the big hand of the cuckoo clock ticked neatly into place above the number twelve, the little doors above the clock face flipped open and a yellow bird perched on an extendable arm popped out, twittering eight times in a surprisingly loud, enthusiastic chirp that made Mike jump suddenly in alarm, blinking and jerking to attention.

_Eight o'clock, on the nose._

Her heartbeat instantly thumping back into her throat, Mike quickly scrambled up from her seat underneath the window where she'd slouched down with her back to wall some twenty-five minutes ago. She jumped to her knees and whirled around to press her face eagerly against the glass, her eyes darting expectantly to the tunnels . . . she stared, breathless, for a few seconds . . . then exhaled, her face falling disappointedly and her shoulders drooping. There was no one there. The dark openings of the two tunnels still sat there in the breaking twilight, empty and still.

A slight, sudden emptiness balling in the pit of her stomach, Mike slowly rose to her feet, letting her hands fall from the window pane and hang limply at her sides. In the silence of the room behind her, sounding out and echoing in her ears like a cymbal clash, the big hand of the clock _ticked _forward again.

_One minute past eight._

Mike took a deep, steadying breath, and turned away from the window, walking slowly to the middle of her kitchen and pausing to rest her hand on the wood-topped island.

_Relax, _she mentally commanded herself, taking another long breath. _If he said he'd be here, he'll be here._

A sudden restless itch started up in her feet, and she began pacing the kitchen, walking in calm, deliberate circles around the island with her arms tightly crossed over her chest and her gaze pointed thoughtfully at the floor, a troubled frown gradually creeping over her mouth. Every time she passed by the window, she tamped down the gnawing urge to throw herself against the glass again. She forced herself to keep pacing until another five minutes had passed . . . then, heart pounding, she stopped at the window and slowly peered out again.

Nothing.

Her frown deepened and her brow knitted into a fretting wrinkle as she turned around and put her back to the glass, her fingers worrying at the cuffs of her sleeves as she tried not to begin thinking the worst.

_You're being ridiculous. He's not even ten minutes late. If he __**said **__he'd come, then he'll __**come**__._

"He'll be here," she muttered firmly to herself, holding her arms tightly together and squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. "I _believe he's going to be here."_

The clock obstinately ticked again . . . nine minutes past.

Wincing slightly, almost not wanting to look again for fear of being disappointed, Mike reluctantly cracked her eyes and turned over her shoulder, peering once more through the glass. Her gaze fell over the left tunnel opening, and instantly her eyes bugged wide and her mouth opened, a silent gasp escaping her as she lost her leaning purchase on the floor and her feet slid out from under her in a start of surprise and elation. She dropped down to the floor flat on her rear, the hard wood sending an aching shudder straight up her tailbone and the back of her head lightly conking the window sill as she fell. Wincing and rubbing the back of her skull, but too excited to think about the pain for more than an instant, Mike was on her feet again in a mad whirl of limbs and hair, jumping up and squashing her nose flat against the window to look out at the large, unmistakable figure silhouetted against the mouth of the left tunnel with a breathless rush of relief and happiness.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

When Ralph had finally reached the end of the long, winding Masterwork tunnel, just as he was about to step out of the shadows and into glowing orange light of the game, something stopped him and held him back, hovering just before the rim of the stone arch with his breath catching in his throat. For a long moment, he just stood there looking out, his heart beating faster and his palms beginning to sweat ever so slightly.

In stark contrast to his first visit to the game, the Masterwork sky was entirely clear and cloudless that evening, the entire landscape bathed in the golden-orange glow of the setting sun, which was just beginning to sink down over the ocean horizon. There wasn't the faintest whisper of a breeze, either . . . except for the dull, rhythmic lapping of the water on the edge of the beach, everything in the game was perfectly still and peaceful.

Ralph looked over the tranquil scene in front of him with a slow, nervous exhale, flexing his fingers and flattening his mouth into a firm, resigned line.

_Well . . . he couldn't have asked for better "date" weather, at least._

_Heaven, help him . . ._

Ralph wasn't sure how many minutes more he stood there in the shadows, his pulse pounding in his ears and the anxious sweat creeping up from his palms, to his underarms, to the back of his neck . . . but finally, a deliberate nudge at the back of his mind reminded him that he had promised to be at her door by eight o'clock, and that if he didn't suck it up and get moving, he was going to be late. With a final, calming exhale, Ralph ran the back of his hand over his lightly perspiring forehead and stepped out of the tunnel.

Despite the constant quiver of nerves and excitement tightening his insides, Ralph couldn't help but look around at the beautiful, glowing landscape of the game as he walked down the footpath, marveling to himself again at the almost unprecedented level of realism and detail in the Masterwork world. He had seen sunsets in other games before, but they had always been static and unchanging, more like painted backdrops of orange and purple . . . but _here, _where there was real time and real weather, the sunset seemed almost like a living, breathing thing, changing and shifting in constant motions so slow and gentle they were imperceptible to the eye, but could be _felt _by the other senses_, _as strongly and distinctly as if he could reach out and touch the blazing orange sphere with his fingers as it sank lazily toward the horizon line.

_Glitch, or no glitch . . . . Masterwork really was an incredible place._

Almost before he knew it, Ralph's feet had carried him to the last bend in the dirt path, and right on cue the yellow-brick house fazed and rippled into view in front of him, abruptly obscuring the setting sun and glowing with a faint outline of the golden rays around its shadowed face. His palms now sweating continually without reservation, Ralph swallowed thickly and plowed forward, setting his eyes in a determined stare at her front door as he marched straight up to the front step, deliberately avoiding looking at the bare post where the mailbox used to sit.

He stepped up onto the stone porch, squaring his eyes on the little red door sitting there innocently in front of him. Quelling down a threatening upsurge of deja-vu and drawing in a final, deep breath to steady his nerves, Ralph pulled up every last vestige of confidence he had in him and raised his fist.

_A date . . . . a real date, with a real woman. And not just __**any **__woman . . . __**the **__woman, the only woman who had ever made him feel this way in his life. _

_His __**first, **__real __date . . . . with Mike._

"Well . . . here goes _something_," he muttered under his breath.

With his heartbeat in his mouth, Ralph tilted his fist back, and . . . with a fair touch more nervous force than was necessary . . . began to knock.

_BUNK, BUNK . . ._

He pounded his knuckles twice . . . and then, in the split second that his hand was lifted back, preparing for the third . . . in absolute silence . . . the top half of the door suddenly swung open in a single, lightning-fast sweep . . . Mike was standing there, her eyes wide with excitement and her mouth half open, about to speak . . . everything happened in a lightning-fast blink, her face flashing before Ralph's eyes and registering an instantaneous fraction too late, and before he could move, before he could even register the thought to stop himself . . . .

. . . _BTHOCK!_

_. . . _he brought his fist down for the third knock where there was no longer any door, and punched her in the face.

The instant he felt the tip of his knuckles make contact with the soft, resilient cartilage of her nose, time collided alongside the impact and ground into agonizingly slow motion. He watched as the lagging tremor of the blow rippled through her face, her eyes widening for a slow instant and then squeezing shut as the blunt force jolted through her, her nose flattening under his knuckle. As the tremor dissipated, she began to reel back, the ends of her hair hovering suspended for a moment before catching up with the movement and following the backwards drag of her head. He watched as a bright pink glow bloomed at the point of the impact between her eyes, spreading slowly under her eyes and down to the tip of her nose.

It wasn't a _true _punch . . . not in the sense that there had been any real arm strength coiled behind the impact . . . it was really more of a two-way collision, the forward momentum of her head as she was leaning eagerly toward the open doorframe striking and bouncing back from the opposite, downward momentum of his fist . . . but given the steep, unforgiving ratio of the size and weight of the colliding objects, it was still powerful enough to bang Mike's head straight back, her face rolling skyward, and knock her to the floor, stumbling a single step backwards and then landing on her backside with a hard _thunk._

The instant the sound of her hitting the hardwood floor reverberated in Ralph's ears, time rocketed immediately back up to speed, racing to catch up and then hitting him with an intangible blow to the chest that sucked his breath away. One second, everything had been fine . . . and then, all at once, he was standing there gaping down at her, his eyes wide in paralyzed shock and his fist still hovering in midair.

For a few still, horrible seconds that seemed to last an eternity, Ralph could neither speak, nor move . . . he could only blink down at Mike with a frozen expression of utter disbelief. He felt hollow, as if all of his insides had instantaneously vanished.

_It was a dream. A nightmare. It had to be. He could not possibly have actually just done what he thought he'd just done._

But the seconds ticked by, and as the hollow feeling inside of him gradually gave way to a hot, liquid, all-too-real sensation of abject horror, the absolute reality of the moment began to sink in.

Michelangela, sitting on the floor with her hands propping her up from behind and her legs sprawled out in front of her, suddenly opened her eyes wide, blinking a few times and making a strange face, as if she weren't positive what had just happened. Moving slowly and stiffly like a stunned animal, she sat up further and blinked again, looking calmly straight ahead as she raised one hand and gingerly, experimentally touched the tips of her fingers to the bridge of her nose.

She sat there silently for a few seconds more, then looked up and abruptly locked eyes with Ralph, who had not budged an inch from his horror-struck position.

Mike looked blankly at him, then at his upheld fist, then back at him.

Then . . . to his utter, stupefied disbelief . . . a huge smile spread over her face, she snorted, and then actually laughed out loud.

"_Wow," _she said bluntly, her voice nasal and dull as if someone were pinching her nose shut. "So . . . I guess I sort of had that coming, huh?"

Ralph stared in shocked silence for another moment until Mike, still chuckling oddly to herself, began to get to her feet . . . then, his senses and consciousness all flooded back to him in a jarring burst of mortification and guilt, and he quickly found his voice again as he veritably threw himself at the bottom half of the door, reaching around and fumbling violently with the knob for a few seconds before bursting it open and trying to squeeze through so quickly his overalls got caught for a moment in the door jamb.

"NO! _No, _that was an accident, th-that . . . _oh, _my - no, no, _Mike, _I am so, _SO_, sorry . . . I . . . I don't know what _happened, _I just . . . . are you _okay?"_

Mike just watched his frantic struggling against the doorframe for a few seconds with a funny, lopsided grin, then laughed again and came toward him, bending over and carefully lifting the piece of his fabric that was hooked on the metal jamb. As soon as he was free, Ralph tripped haphazardly into the room, swerving and regaining his balancing and whirling back around to face Mike, who had stifled another giggle behind her hand as she watched him stumble indoors.

Without waiting for her permission, Ralph swiftly but carefully seized both sides of her head in his hands, tilting her face up to look at him and scanning it frantically for damage.

"It's o_kay, _Ralph, it doesn't even hurt anymore," she insisted, looking him reassuringly in the eye as the heels of his hands pushed slightly into her cheeks to turn her this way and that. "Besides, this just makes us even now!"

_"Even?" _Ralph parroted incredulously, then froze abruptly again when he tilted her head further back and saw small, slowly blooming spots of red budding out of both her nostrils. His mouth worked once soundlessly, then croaked out in a horrified sputter, "Y-your . . . your _nose is bleeding!"_

Mike's eyes widened with a slowly mounting look of surprise mixed with what, to Ralph's further incredulity, could only be described as fascination.

"It _is?" _she muttered disbelievingly, lifting her hands and feeling half-blindly around Ralph's wrists until she got through to her own face, curiously dabbing her fingertips under her bright pink, slightly swollen nose, then holding her hand back to look at it. She blinked a few times at the dots of bright red on her fingers, then looked back at Ralph with a slowly widening grin.

"Well, I'll be . . . whaddaya know about _that?" _she muttered, her eyes darting excitedly back and forth between the bloodspots and his confused stare. "I've never _bled _before, Ralph! I wasn't even sure if I _could . . . _this is amazing! What do I do?"

Completely flabbergasted, Ralph slowly let go of her head and let his arms fall limply to his sides, staring at her with his mouth open.

"What . . . what do you _do?"_

She bit her lip and nodded excitedly, holding her hands eagerly in front of her as if waiting for instructions.

"Yes! Yes, what do I do now?"

Ralph blinked, his eyebrows flattening incredulously.

"You . . . well . . . you get something to _stop _it with."

Mike snapped her fingers and narrowed her eyes determinedly. "Right, _right_, of course. Something to stop it with."

Ralph watched her with a blank, dumbfounded stare as she trotted quickly over to the kitchen island, opened one of the top drawers, and pulled out a small, thin gray dish towel. She opened another drawer and took out a pair of kitchen scissors, then proceeded to cut out two smaller pieces of the cloth, roll them each into a tiny wad, and insert them into her nostrils. Ralph squinted one eye at her disbelief as she moved back to stand in front of him and fold her hands calmly in front of her, smiling as matching red stains gradually soaked halfway through the home-made nose-plugs.

"This is good, right?" she asked brightly, her nasal tone pinching even lower and funnier than before.

Ralph stared down at her for a moment, a bizarre mixture of confusion and relief warring briefly inside of him . . . and then, all of a sudden, it all gave way and he had to struggle not to burst out laughing. He pressed his lips tight together, his face contorting and small choking noises stifling in his throat. He crossed his arms and held one hand over his mouth, clamping in the threatening laughter and trying to look as if he were thinking instead.

"That's . . . that's . . . just fine," he finally managed to squeak out, biting back a heavy snort and taking a few deep breaths, his mouth still wavering in a struggling smile.

Mike fairly beamed.

"How long do you think it will bleed for?" she asked curiously, crossing her eyes at her own nose and gingerly touching it. "This is so in_credible _. . . I mean, from the first few minutes I woke up, I _knew _my body had a ventricle system of some kind, but up until now I thought that maybe it was just purely aesthetic . . . you know, like a scripted under-level of my visual code to give my digital rig more weight, more of a realistic layering . . . look, if I turn my arms out just so, you can actually _see _the shadow effect of this vein here through the epidermis . . . but I never really imagined that I had a working, pseudo-organic system with actual _blood _in it! You know . . . come to think of it, I didn't really even know what to call it until just now . . . _blood. _Is it really written into my code, or do you think it's just, like, a sporadic phenomenon arising from the exact right intersection of program overlap? I just don't even . . . _Ralph, _this is a_mazing! _Really, how long do you think it will bleed for?_"_

She blurted out the whole speech in one rapid burst, then looked expectantly up at Ralph as if actually waiting for his answer. He simply stared at her in return, his jaw hanging halfway open. All he could for a solid ten seconds was blink.

"Mike . . . you . . . . yesterday, you didn't know your own _name . . . . . . _but . . . you understand all of _that?"_

Her eager smile flattened slightly in surprise.

"All of wha. . . . what, you mean that? Why . . . don't you?"

Ralph's jaw descended further, his brain still reeling to catch up. She had lost him completely at the word _ventricle. _

_How . . . . how in the world . . . ?_

_For crying out loud . . . this was someone who hadn't known she'd been living over a kitchen for two days . . . hadn't known what a __**mailbox **__was . . . but she had figured out __**that**__, all of that, within the first few minutes of being plugged in?_

_She didn't know what to do with a __**nosebleed**__, but she understood the abstract configurations of her structural code?_

_What?_

For a long, awkward moment of silence, Ralph just stared unabashedly at her, trying vainly to make some kind of sense out of it. When he didn't respond, Mike began to fidget uncomfortably under his gaze. She nervously averted her eyes from him, turning away slightly and testing her left nose plug. She carefully pulled the cloth stopper out of her nostril and winced faintly, twitching that side of her face with a flicker of pain. As soon as he was reminded again of the dried blood under her nose and the lingering, puffy redness between her eyes, Ralph snapped instantly back to reality and was struck again with a heavy pang of guilt. He took a small step closer to her, one hand hovering uncertainly as if he wanted to do something for her, but didn't know what.

"Er . . . listen, Mike, I . . . I really am sorry about that. _Really."_

She glanced up at him, blinking in mild surprise at his remorseful expression just as she pulled out the second nose plug.

"Oh, don't be!" she said reassuringly. "After all, I hit you on accident _first_. No worries, it was an honest mistake. And look, see . . . it's already almost back to normal."

She looked cross-eyed at her own face again, and Ralph cringed empathetically. The bleeding had stopped, but it was certainly _not _back to normal . . . her nose and the surrounding skin was still beet red and slightly swollen-looking. Mike noticed his grim look and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

"Ahhh, I think you still might want to hit it with some cold water," he suggested timidly, rubbing the back of his neck.

_Geez . . . when __**he'd **__had a swollen eye, she'd acted as if he needed emergency treatment . . . then, when he'd gone and practically broken her nose, she hardly seemed to think it worthy of her attention? _

Mike looked down thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugged resignedly. "Yeah . . . I guess so, huh? Alright then . . . I'll just be a second. Go ahead, make yourself at home!" she gestured warmly to the room, then went back over to her sink and turned on the tap, leaning over and splashing water gently over her face.

Breathing a small sigh of relief, Ralph turned around and took a better look around the cozy wooden room. It looked substantially more lived-in that it had when he'd first seen it last night . . . pieces of furniture were slightly askew, various odds and ends had been left out on table-tops, and it looked as if a fair amount of art supplies had made their way down the ladder from her studio upstairs. Ralph noticed something hanging over the chair he'd sat in the night before and did a slight double-take, raising one eyebrow at it when he realized that it was the same tablecloth she'd given him to dry off with.

"I had it ready for you, just in case it started to rain again," Mike's voice suddenly sounded from across the room as if reading his thoughts. He started slightly and looked back at her; she was watching him, peering over her shoulder from the sink, smiling as she wiped her face dry with a towel and turned off the tap. Ralph began to smile back at her, one corner of his mouth hooking at the cute flush on her freckled cheeks from rubbing with the towel, her hair falling messily around her face as she straightened up . . . then, his eyes landed absently on the window just behind her over the kitchen sink, and his smile straightened into a pensive frown as the implication of her words sunk in.

"But it's beautiful outside," he pointed out dubiously, turning to address her as she meandered back towards him. "There's not a cloud in the sky. Did you really think it was going to rain?"

Mike paused, slightly taken aback. She hesitated, shrugging and rubbing one arm.

"Well, I mean . . . I don't know, I just thought, maybe . . . it rained the _last _time you came, and I just . . . wanted to be prepared, is all, in case . . . " she gradually trailed off, muttering evasively under her breath, and all at once something clicked in Ralph's brain.

_The mailbox . . . this room . . . her name . . . . the nosebleed, the rain . . . ._

_All of a sudden, it was all beginning to make sense to him. _

As Ralph looked at her, the tip of her nose still bright pink and her big eyes uneasily avoiding his questioning gaze, he felt a sudden, warm glow of understanding building up inside of him.

"You have no idea what weather really is, do you?" he said quietly.

Mike started, her eyes jerking towards him and her mouth opening in the beginning of a defensive retort . . . and then she stopped, the spark visibly deflating from behind her eyes as she shook her head.

"And . . . " Ralph continued gently, taking a small step closer to her. " . . . I'm willing to bet you haven't set foot outside this house yet, either."

Mike looked at him sadly for a few seconds, then let out a small, sudden growl of frustration and defeat, balling her hands into fists and holding them angrily over her forehead, leaning back against her kitchen island.

"I'm an idiot, aren't I?" she stated blankly. "I _knew _it. I _knew _there was something wrong with me, right from the beginning . . . tell me the truth, Ralph. These are things I should know, aren't they? Things _you _know . . . things everyone knows, except me. _Aren't _they?"

He jumped at the abruptly dark, demanding tone of her voice, hastily trying to assuage her.

"No! Mike, of course you're not an _idiot, _that's not what I meant at all . . . all I meant was that I think . . . I think you might - "

"Be _diff_erent?" she interjected glumly, recalling their conversation from the previous night.

Ralph flattened his brow into a firm, serious line and looked her straight in the eye. "No. I think your game might have a glitch."

The moment he said the word, her frustrated scowl melted and she widened her eyes in stunned curiosity. She was silent for a short moment, the gears of her mind almost perceptibly turning in front of him.

"A . . . a what?"

"A glitch," he repeated, firmly, but gently. "And from the looks of it . . . a _big _one."

Mike mouthed the word silently to herself, narrowing her eyes at him quizzically.

"What's . . . a _glitch?" _she asked quietly.

"It's a mistake in the program of your game . . . a part of the code that's missing, or scrambled, or . . . _something. _It can cause any number of problems for you, and for the game . . . but . . . Mike, listen," Ralph lowered his voice further, trying to speak as softly and comfortingly as he could as the look in her eyes grew more and more uncertain with every word he said. "I think that may be the reason there are so many things you don't know . . . . the reason you can't remember certain things."

Ralph wasn't sure, but he thought he saw her eyes dart rapidly, almost fearfully toward the far window in the southeast corner of the room . . . in the direction of the two tunnels outside. His heart suddenly aching for her, wanting to help her more than anything in the world, he took another step nearer to her and crouched down slightly, bringing his face closer to her eye level. He swallowed thickly, forbidding himself to stutter or look away as he continued.

"You said you felt like there was . . . a _wall, _around you, something keeping you from understanding things. Well . . . I think that wall might be a glitch, a mistake in your code. I think it's doing something to your mind, keeping you from processing some of the basic information about your game, about _life. _I think . . . I think it's the reason you didn't know your own name," he finished softly.

Mike stared at him quietly for another few seconds after he finished talking, the lights behind her eyes shifting slowly from confusion, to fear, to a dawning, inevitable comprehension . . . she held his gaze for a fleeting moment, then looked away. There was a long, pregnant silence . . . then, when she finally spoke, her voice was shallow and distant.

"So . . . . I was right. I am different_. _I'm . . . _broken_," she said quietly, muttering deep in her throat without looking up from the floor. "There is something wrong with me . . . and . . . and there's nothing I can do about it?"

His heart suddenly pounding, the sad, defeated murmur of her voice biting into him like a physical pain and filling him inexplicably with hot-blooded courage, with the immediate need to lift her spirits no matter what it took . . . Ralph swallowed the dryness in his throat, and in one bold, gentle motion, reached out and lifted her chin with the edge of his finger, turning her face to look up at him with a tiny inhale of surprise.

Almost struck speechless by his own abrupt fearlessness, his heartbeat throbbing almost deafeningly in his ears, Ralph slowly shook his head at her.

"No. I think there _is _something you can do."

Her wide eyes grew even wider, a combined glimmer of sadness and hope trembling somewhere behind them.

"_What? _What can I do?_" _she pleaded, lifting her hand and touching it, ever so lightly, against his.

Ralph swallowed again, forbidding himself from focusing on the closeness of their proximity, on the warmth of her face above his hand and the lingering, rosy glow across her nose and cheeks . . . and instead, turned his head and nodded meaningfully toward the front door, the door that had been left hanging inconspicuously open since he'd first entered. Mike followed his gaze and looked to the doorway, opening out onto the golden twilight of the evening . . . then turned back to him, her brow knitting in confusion. Ralph looked back at her and gave her a timid, encouraging smile.

"You can let me try to help you."

A/N; I promise, this will be the last chapter in which either Ralph or Mike hit each other in the face. The mental image of Ralph accidentally punching out a chick half his height was just too fun to pass up. Let me know what you think, reviews make me smile!


	17. Chapter 16: Take My Hand

A/N: Thanks so much for all of your feedback, guys. It was quite helpful. The majority opinion seems to be in favor of shorter updates posted more frequently, and I think I'm beginning to lean that way as well . . . it also may help train me to be a bit more economical with my writing. That being said, here's the next chapter, finished sooner than I anticipated!

Just as a note, this chapter strays very briefly into some . . . hmmm . . . _mildly, _suggestive territory? About as suggestive as it's going to get in this story, probably. I tend to keep fan fictions within the content maturity neighborhood of their source material . . . thus, kid's movie, PG rated material. I'm prreeeetttyy sure nothing in this chapter violates the K+ rating, but if it seems that way to any of you, I may think about bumping up the rating just to be safe.

Enjoy, urrybody.

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted concepts or characters mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 16: Take My Hand_

"Aaaaahh . . . . . _Ralph? _Ah, listen, I . . . I know I _said _I wanted to do this, but . . . now, I . . . I'm just not sure if I can."

"What? _Sure _you can, you're practically there already! Come on, just _one _more little step," Ralph urged encouragingly, standing behind Mike and leaning over her shoulder so she could turn to glance nervously at his face. Her eyes were wide and apprehensive, a faint sheen of perspiration shining just visibly below her hairline. She swallowed thickly, turning back to face forward and taking deep, heaving breaths.

"It's okay, take your time," Ralph said reassuringly. "I'm right here behind you."

Mike nodded fervently without looking at him, her chest beginning to heave slightly. She was standing on the threshold of her open front door with both hands gripping the posts for dear life, her fingers digging so tightly into the wood that her knuckles were white. With the exception of her nose - still pink from being punched - her face had gone fearfully pale, making her freckles stick out darkly in contrast.

Outside, the setting sun had touched down on the horizon and melted from brilliant gold into a warm, lazy orange, casting long shadows over the grass and coloring the snow on the far distant mountain tops a soft tangerine.

Mike stared out at the vast world of her game for a few more seconds, her deep breaths almost escalating into hyperventilation as her eyes flashed back and forth . . . she turned her head to look pleadingly at Ralph again, and when their eyes met she slowly began to shake her head.

"No. No, I just . . . Ralph, I just _can't."_

Ralph's shoulders slumped in frustration, and he began to open his mouth hastily to argue with her . . . then wisely stopped himself, sighing heavily instead and narrowing his brow in thought. He was silent for a moment, then got down on one knee so that his head was almost level with hers.

"You can do this, Mike," he said softly, looking her square in the eye.

She shook her head faster, her fingers beginning to tremble just slightly on the doorframe. "No, no, _no . . . "_

"Yes, yes, _yes, _you _can," _Ralph insisted gently, nodding and raising his voice to match hers, talking over her until she gave a small growl of frustration and jerked her head back to look through the doorway, hunching her shoulders up around her neck. Ignoring it, Ralph lifted his right hand and placed it gently over her arm. She twitched slightly, but didn't look at him.

_"Mike," _he said flatly, his voice firm, but warm. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life cooped up in this house, going back and forth between two rooms, every day, _forever?"_

Without turning to show her face, Mike slowly, silently shook her head.

"And do you _want _to spend the rest of your life scared, and confused?"

She shook again.

"That's right. So . . . do you _want _to figure out a way to beat the glitch, or don't you?"

She hesitated a split second . . . then nodded, her shoulders gradually relaxing down.

"Then _this_ is where you have to start," Ralph urged her gently, rising back onto both feet. "Think about it, Mike . . . your name, the mailbox, the kitchen . . . as soon as you _saw _them, they all came back to you. Your glitch doesn't stop you from understanding things, it just . . . _blocks _them, somehow, until you can touch and see them for yourself. All you have to do is open yourself up to things, and . . . I think that wall around your mind will start to come down."

Mike was silent for a another moment, her grip easing up and her fingers sliding gently further down the doorposts until her arm was relaxed under his hand. She turned around to look at Ralph, her brow knit and the anxious fear in her eyes replaced with faint, skeptical optimism.

_"Do you really think so?" _she half-whispered.

Ralph smiled and gave a firm, forceful nod as he leaned further over her shoulder again.

"Cross my heart," he guaranteed reassuringly, a bubble of elation swelling in his chest when he saw the faintest beginnings of a smile turning on her pink lips. "I _promise, _Mike, there is nothing out there to be scared of. Look, I'll go first and help you."

Mike let go of the doorposts and allowed Ralph to gently move her aside with one hand, turning sideways and ducking through the doorway, sucking his stomach in carefully to squeeze past the door jamb. He took one step off of the stoop and then turned around, holding his arms out and taking a deep breath of fresh air, letting it out with a satisfied sigh and a demonstrative nod in Mike's direction. She crept timidly back up to the threshold, one hand worrying nervously at the front of her smock as she watched him with a conflicted expression.

"See?" he said, smiling encouragingly. "Nothing to be afraid of. Just fresh air, clear sky, and a beautiful sunset. Don't you want to come out and see it for yourself?"

Mike's fist tightened in the neck of her clothes, her gaze darting anxiously between Ralph's face and the stone step for a few seconds more . . . then, finally, taking a deep breath and holding it, she squeezed her eyes shut and raised one trembling bare foot through the doorway, hovering it six inches above the stoop.

Ralph's eyes lit up. "Yes! _Yes, _that's it!"

Her eyes still shut, Mike gripped the doorframe with one hand and groped the other out blindly in front of her. Ralph held his hand out responsively and she latched onto it, gripping his thumb for dear life as she eased, inch by inch, forward into the open air.

"You're almost there! Just a tiny . . . bit . . . . _there!"_

Ralph tugged ever so gently on Mike's arm, pulling her the final inch forward. Her foot touched down flat on the stone step, and she let out her breath in a gasping burst, her eyes shooting open and darting all around her, as if checking to make sure she was still in one piece. For a few seconds, she stood there with one foot over the threshold, her head whipping in every direction and then finally landing on Ralph's face, her eyes widening at him slowly as she began to breathe faster.

Ralph glowed triumphantly back at her.

"Congratulations, Miss Masterwork. You are officially _outside."_

She blinked once, and open her mouth in an enormous grin of disbelief.

"I'm outSIDE!"

Mike let out a shrill squeal of happiness and abruptly jumped out into the air, launching off of her planted foot, pulling on Ralph's hand and throwing herself straight at him. She crashed against his chest with her torso and latched her hands behind his neck, catching him so off guard that he teetered a step backward and spun halfway around. She swung from his neck like a pendant on a necklace and abruptly let go, sailing off and landing with a staggering giggle on her feet. Ralph's cheeks flared for a just a moment as he lightly shook himself, only briefly stunned by the moment of closeness. He quickly got over it, his proud smile returning as he watched Mike rotating in slow circles on the grass, holding her heart with one hand and her head with the other as her green eyes nearly bugged out of her head. For half a minute, she just gaped speechlessly, struggling to take in everything around her.

The longer he watched her, the more tickled Ralph felt, until finally he couldn't help laughing out loud.

"Well? What did I tell ya?" he chuckled, gesturing to the majestic landscape.

Mike shook her head slowly, one corner of her mouth hooking in a disbelieving smile as her eyes scanned again across the rolling mountains and towering bank of forest.

"It's unbelievable . . . . I mean, I've seen this, through . . . through _windows, _and all, but . . . . just . . . . . _wow. _It isn't the same . . . . . not at _all."_

Ralph beamed at her, then choked on another snort of laughter as Mike abruptly let her knees buckles and flopped down face first on the grass, feeling it in slow circles with her hands and inhaling deeply through her nose. She lay there a short moment, then rolled to her back and sat up, looking around with a hungry, excited look on her face. Without a word, she jumped to her feet and took off across the grass at a dead run.

"Hey, wait up!" Ralph called, grinning and following after her.

Mike ran like a rabbit across the wide, lush stretch of her lawn, banking widely around the south side of her house and slowing to a stop when she came to the edge of the beach, the grass stopping abruptly and dropping four feet down into a steep little sand dune. She stood there speechlessly, gazing open-mouthed out at the ocean and the orange, glowing sunset as Ralph caught up to her. He skidded to a halt beside her, yelping in surprise and almost teetering over the edge of the surprise bank, flailing his arms for a split second to regain his balance. Mike didn't appear to notice, her eyes wide and unblinking with a transfixed shine of absolute wonder.

"Oh . . . . Ralph," she said softly, her voice calm, deep and awe-struck. "Ralph . . . . . it's more beautiful than anything I've ever seen."

Ralph glanced briefly at the sunset, then turned back to look at her, and froze. His heart suddenly began to pound, and he realized that he was staring at her, unable to look away from the gentle curve of her parted lips, the ends of her hair that floated and crossed over her high forehead in the faint whispering breeze coming off the salt water . . . _her eyes, those impossibly green eyes that reflected the golden gleam of the sky and the waves . . . _her pale throat, the shallow rise and fall of her chest as she breathed . . .

"Yeah . . . " he answered her quietly, before he knew what he was saying. " . . . yeah . . . it is."

Mike stared off longingly at the horizon for another moment, then suddenly turned to look up at him, making him jump and immediately dart his eyes away, a swell of heat rising in his face . . . but then, she spoke in a voice so tender and unaffected, his gaze was drawn helplessly back.

"Thank you, Ralph," she said, turning her body towards him and touching his arm with one hand. "Thank you . . . _thank you so much _for making me do this."

The heat blossomed into color, and Ralph tried vainly to vent it out with a short, nervous laugh, shifting on his feet and leaning slightly away from the tantalizing brush of her fingertips.

_"Well, _you know . . . _make _is a strong word," he protested weakly. "I just sort of . . . gave you a _nudge, _is all . . . . heh . . . . . ah, so . . . s-so, is it working? Is . . . any of this coming back to you?" he asked brightly, eager to change the line of conversation.

Mike pointed her face skyward and turned her head in a long, slow pan, nodding at the brilliant washes of orange and magenta and swiftly darkening blue.

"Yes . . . . it's incredible . . . I _know _I've never so much as set foot out here before now, and yet somehow . . . somehow it's already as if I've stood on this spot every day for a hundred years. I think you're right, Ralph . . . . I think I _can _get over the wall."

She was silent for a moment, staring up at the sky with a mixture of contemplation and relief . . . then, an idea flashed visibly across her face, and she jerked her head down to pin Ralph with an exuberant smile.

"Would you like to see my studio?"

Ralph started, blinking in surprise at the abrupt shift in thought.

"Your studio . . . you mean . . . . the one on the second floor, up that little ladder?"

Mike nodded vigorously. "Yeah! I'd love to show it to you. I mean . . . it isn't much, but it has a great view of the arcade. Maybe you could even show me where Fix-It Felix Jr. is!"

Ralph hesitated, trying to think of how best to word his next statement.

"Well . . . of course, I would love to, but . . . . er . . . . I'm . . . not so sure I'd be able to get up there . . . . not without breaking something, at least."

She gave him a nonplussed blink.

"What? Don't be silly! It's easy, I'll show you . . . all you have to do is climb up through the - " she stopped suddenly in mid-sentence as her gaze fell on his broad shoulders, the problem abruptly becoming clear to her.

"Ooo_ooooh_," she muttered slowly in realization, her eyes trolling up to his face and giving him a guilty look. "That's right . . . I, uh . . . . I guess that trap door _is_ a little small, isn't it?"

Ralph shrugged, trying to smile but really just showing his teeth in an embarrassed grimace.

"Happens to me a lot," he explained regretfully.

Mike held her chin thoughtfully for a moment, then sighed, her swell of excitement deflating.

"Well . . . that's okay, it's . . . it's no big deal. Forget I said anything," she muttered quickly, waving her hand and failing to mask the hint of disappointment in her voice. "It's just the room where I work, is all, nothing fancy . . . . and it _is _sort of a mess at the moment, now that I think of it . . . "

She trailed off, looking away guiltily and wringing her fingers. Ralph frowned, lifting his gaze over her head to glance critically at the yellow-brick house, which was still close enough to remain visible. His eyes narrowed for a moment at the large windows on the second story, and suddenly a wonderfully simple idea popped into his head.

"Mike," he said, his smile returning as she glanced questioningly back at him. "Go on up to your studio and open one of those corner windows. I'll meet you up there."

Her eyes brightened with simultaneous excitement and confusion, a lop-sided grin tilting her mouth. She lowered one eyebrow skeptically.

"Well . . . alright, but how are you going to . . . ?"

"Trust me. I'll see you up there in two minutes."

Mike opened her mouth to question him again, then clamped it shut instead, her eyes twinkling curiously as she walked obediently back to her front door, flashing him a coy look over her shoulder before disappearing inside.

Ralph watched her go, then turned and made his way to the edge of the house, tilting his head back to look expectantly back up to the second floor, a buzz of excitement suddenly itching at his hands as feet as he waited. Less than a minute later, there was a soft _click, _then the tight, sticking squeak of the frame as Mike grappled with the window pane. After a second of struggling, the window jolted and slid quickly open, Mike's head and arms popping into view as she pushed the pane all the way open. She tossed the hair out of her eyes and leaned over the sill of the window, peering down and spotting him there at the bottom of the wall.

"What now?" she called down curiously.

Ralph didn't say anything. He simply shot her a quick smile, reached up with both hands to find a purchase on the yellow brick, and pulled himself up onto the wall.

Mike's face blanked in surprise, and she covered her mouth with one hand as she made a noise halfway between a giggle and a gasp. Ralph couldn't help the sudden surge of masculine pride that puffed up inside his chest as he felt Mike's eyes glued to him in fascination, her obviously impressed squeaks of amazement turning his ears red as she watched him climb almost effortlessly up the side of the building.

With a small groan of effort ( which, if he was honest with himself, he did only for show ), Ralph clamped one hand on the sill of the second story window and heaved himself up onto the ledge, Mike quickly stepping back so he could climb inside. It was a bit of a tight fit, but with a little maneuvering he managed to squeeze through it with his most of his confidence still intact . . . even when the floorboards creaked in protest as he lowered his weight onto them. Straightening up ( or rather _almost _straightening up . . . the ceiling on the second story of Mike's house was a good foot and a half lower than in her kitchen and dining room ) and dusting off his hands with as much casual dignity as he could display without being obvious, Ralph sniffed once and turned to face Mike . . . and with a sudden feeling of bravery, raised one eyebrow at her and gave her his best attempt at a debonair smile.

"Ta _da!"_ he joked.

If Mike knew he was being facetious, she gave no sign of it. She was standing there with her arms limp and her shoulders slack, gaping at him with a stunned grin of disbelief.

"That . . . . that was a_mazing!" _she cried out when she finally found her voice after a few seconds. "You just . . . . straight up the _wall_, and . . . . how did you _do _that?"

Ralph had never had so much trouble maintaining a calm smile. He could practically feel his head swelling with every word she said . . . no one had _ever_ seemed so impressed by his game powers before.

_If you could even call climbing buildings a 'power' . . . come to think of it, no one had ever seemed impressed by it before, __**period**__ . . ._

But now, Mike was staring at him with as much astonishment as if he'd just flapped his arms and flown up to her window. Fighting down the incredibly pleased flush that threatened to creep up his neck, Ralph cleared his throat and shrugged, folding his arms casually.

"What, _that? _Ahhhh, that was nothing. Climbing buildings is just . . . you know, one of my specialties. I climb a building five times this high every _day_ in my game," he couldn't resist adding.

_"Wow,"_ Mike uttered softly, shaking her head in genuine admiration. "That's incredible, Ralph. I wish . . . _I_ could do something like that."

The bubble of his enjoyment was softly punctured and began to deflate at the melancholy change in her tone. Ralph uncrossed his arms and hunched further forward, suddenly the tiniest bit ashamed for bragging. He looked around the room once with a thoughtful frown, trying to think of something quick to cheer her up . . . and then he remembered why he'd come up in the first place, and where they were both standing now, and his face lit up enthusiastically.

"Hey!" he said brightly, reaching out and nudging her gently on the shoulder with his knuckles. "We didn't come up here to talk about _me. _This is your art studio! Didn't you want to show me around?"

Mike gave him a timid, shy little shrug and gestured around at the cluttered space.

"Well . . . like I said, it's not the most _exciting _place there is. It's just my messy little studio . . . I don't really do anything _too _special . . . "

Ralph blew a loud raspberry and cut her off with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Aw, come _on, _Mike, don't give me that," he growled playfully, making her look away with an embarrassed, blushing smile. "I _know _you can do amazing things . . . I saw it firsthand, remember?" he grinned, pointing one finger at his left eye. Mike chuckled and blushed darker, her cheeks coloring to match the tip of her nose.

"_Well . . . _I do have _some _pieces I've been working on . . . just in my spare time, of course . . . " she muttered shyly, tilting an eye back in the direction of her easel. "Would you . . . like to see them?"

"Would I? Just try and _stop _me."

Mike giggled again and picked her way to the middle of the room, gesturing for Ralph to follow. He edged his way carefully around stacks of blank canvases, piles of paint-covered rags and other supplies, all heaped helter-skelter in various spots on the floor. As he went, he briefly explored the room with his eyes, looking over the crafty wooden furniture, the ornate Persian rug and the glass-covered gas-lamps with an astonished smile of approval. The studio was twice as cozy and inviting in person as it was from across the arcade, or through the Sugar Rush hover-cam . . . there was a rustic, antiquated feel to the place that, for some reason, he found immensely appealing.

Mike had stopped at her easel and was flipping down some pages on an enormous sketchpad. Ralph moved to stand behind her, peering eagerly over her shoulder and being careful to avoid leaning on her dangerously spindly work chair. She passed over a number of papers that all appeared to be covered with some kind of textured, abstract blue shapes, but she was flipping them too quickly for Ralph to catch more than a glimpse of them. . . then, finally, she stopped at the second to last sheet of the pad and propped it up on the easel for him to see, taking a small step back. She nearly bumped backwards into Ralph's chest, but suddenly he was too distracted to even notice. His eyes narrowed and his mouth opened slightly as he leaned further forward over her shoulder, peering closer at the picture on the sketchpad with his heartbeat abruptly quickening. Struggling to find his voice for a moment, Ralph lifted one hand to point feebly at the picture.

"That's . . . . it's . . . it _is, _right?"

Mike bit her lip and nodded, a shy, but delighted gleam glistening at him from the corner of her eye.

On the large sheet of paper in front of him was a loosely done pencil sketch, layered beneath tight, black outlines of charcoal. It was a picture of two hands . . . . . . one of them enormous, bulky, square-knuckled and obviously _his . . . _and the other, resting delicately against it with the fingers splayed, as if in exploration of his palm, was a small, thin, feminine hand . . . a hand he immediately recognized from the night before, gently swabbing an oiled rag over his arm . . .

Ralph, momentarily speechless, stared unblinkingly at the incredibly life-like drawing until Mike's voice abruptly broke him out of the trance.

"I'm not _too _happy with it," she mused critically, tilting her head slightly to one side. "I did it from memory, late last night . . . so I'm afraid I didn't get the fingers just right."

Then, without warning, the hair on Ralph's forearm stood up on end as he suddenly felt Mike's hands gingerly lifting it up to look at it, the brush of her cool fingertips sending electric shivers over his rapidly heating skin. With slight difficulty . . . until he was able to collect himself enough to assist her . . . Mike picked up his left hand and leaned over to peer closely at it, gently feeling his knuckles and tracing her fingers over each of his in turn, then laying her palm flat over his, comparing the ludicrous size ratio with a slight chuckle.

Ralph was grateful that her back was half turned to him, her head bent down and her eyes focused intently on his hand, because his face had abruptly gone red. He swallowed a lump the size of a golf-ball appearing at the back of his throat and forced himself to hold still ( and to pin his free hand carefully behind his back ) until she had finished her studious administrations. After looking over nearly every inch of his hand, Mike turned to square her shoulders with the picture again and took a deliberate step back. This time, she _did _bump into Ralph's chest . . . she purposefully pressed her back flat against him so that she could hold his hand out in front of her and compare it alongside the picture, carefully arranging her hand over his in imitation of the sketch.

Ralph didn't breathe. Slowly, not daring to so much as open his mouth, he tilted his head down and blinked at the curly crown of hair, afraid that if his heart began to pound any harder against the inside of his chest it would literally hit her in the back of the head.

After a moment of silence, Mike made a face and shook her head, heaving a small, dissatisfied sigh and dropping Ralph's hand. The instant he was free he sidestepped hurriedly away from her, letting his breath out in a rush and quickly dashing the back of his hand over his forehead, which had just nearly begun to perspire.

"No . . . _definitely_ didn't get the fingers right," she murmured, folding her arms. She turned back to face Ralph, shrugging innocently. "Oh, well. I'll just have to try again, huh?"

"HUH? . . . . _oh . . . _. ah . . . _yeah, _yeah. Definitely," Ralph stammered, practically jumping when she spoke to him. In a frazzled moment of forgetfulness, he straightened himself up too sharply and banged his head loudly on one of the wooden ceiling rafters, flinching and quickly hunching back down. Mike sucked in a short breath and winced.

"Ooooh . . . . ouch. You okay?"

"Oh, yeah. Fantastic," Ralph grimaced lightly, rubbing the top of his head. When he looked up, Mike was suddenly staring at his hands again, and the expression on her face made his mouth go dry and his palms begin to sweat.

"Uh . . . _um . . . . Mike?" _he squeaked, his voice cracking as she inched another tiny step toward him.

"They were the first thing I ever saw, you know," she said softly, her tone abruptly deep and serious. Ralph blinked, relaxing slightly in confusion at the cryptic statement.

"What were?" he asked blankly.

"_Hands_," she whispered, holding up one of her own without breaking her concentrated stare at his. "My hands . . . they were the first thing I looked at, right after I was plugged in. I didn't even know I could _see, _until I saw them. Ever since, something about them, just . . . fascinates me. I love drawing them, studying them . . . "

All at once Ralph realized she had been inching steadily, continually towards him, the already small gap between them rapidly shrinking. His brain was shouting wildly at him to retreat backwards, but for some reason he couldn't seem to communicate with his feet . . . they ignored the flip-flopping of his stomach and just stood there, rooted to the spot like two cinder blocks, as Mike finally came to a halt just inches in front of him. Helpless, Ralph stared back down at her, silently praying for his color to remain normal.

"I . . . I just wanted to tell you, that . . . I think you have beautiful hands, Ralph," Mike said quietly. Her cheeks flushed immediately and she looked down, her fingers fiddling with the end of her smock.

It took a moment for the meaning of her words to register, and when they did, Ralph could do nothing but blink speechlessly at the top of her head. He became aware of a sudden, unsettling urge twitching in his arms, the muscles suddenly aching and itching to move . . . to do something he didn't dare let them do. After a few seconds of strained quiet, Mike suddenly cleared her throat and turned away from him, moving nonchalantly over to her desk as if nothing had happened. Ralph felt a simultaneous rush of relief and disappointment.

"Th . . . th-thank . . . _thank you," _he finally managed to croak out.

"You're welcome," Mike answered, as casually as if he'd thanked her for holding a door open . . . but despite her cool tone, he could still spy a faint flush of color staining her freckled cheeks. She cleared her throat lightly, then turned to look at him. "Um . . . Ralph? Would it be alright if I asked you a, uh . . . well, sort of an . . . _odd _question?"

"Sure!" he chirped immediately, in a high-pitched, overly enthusiastic voice. "Ah . . . f-fire away."

He coughed nervously, but Mike didn't appear to notice.

"I'm just curious . . . if . . . if you don't mind my asking . . . why _are _your hands so big?"

He blinked at her once in a second of silent clarification, then breathed out a long sigh of relief.

"_Oh _. . . . ah, ha . . . is _that _all!" he muttered breathlessly, trying to laugh casually. "Ha, that's, ah . . . well, that's an easy one. They're big, because I need them to wreck the building with in my game. You know, I told you . . . _Wreck-It _Ralph, remember?"

Mike paused with her mouth open for a second, then did an astonished double-take.

"But . . . you said that you . . . wait, wait just a second. Ralph, are you telling me . . . . that you destroy a whole building, a _real _wood and brick building . . . using only your _hands?"_

In spite of his still-pounding heart and the traces of nervous sweat that had yet to fade from his palms, Ralph felt a resurgence of the same pleased satisfaction at the astounded look on her face.

"Wood, brick, and _concrete_," he added, nodding succinctly. "Yup . . . that's my job."

Mike's jaw dropped further, and her eyes flashed with an exhilarated light that filled his chest back up with hot air again.

"Would you show me?" she begged, folding her hands in front of her and scrunching her shoulders with excitement.

Ralph started, stammering uncertainly and looking once around the room.

"I . . . I mean . . . sure, I _would,_ but . . . . well, it's not exactly the kind of thing I think you want me doing in your _studio . . . _is it?"

Mike's face fell thoughtfully for a second, biting her lip and nodding in admittance . . . then, she snapped her fingers and lit up with a brilliant smile, darting over to the open window and leaning out, pointing somewhere outside and gesturing for Ralph to come over. Knitting his brow skeptically, he moved behind her and hunched down, trying to peer around her in the direction she was pointing.

"The _beach!" _she explained enthusiastically. "There's got to be a _mile_ of rocks and boulders down there . . . those are close enough to bricks and concrete, aren't they?"

Ralph squinted doubtfully at the small strip of beach he was able to see through the corner of the window, a strange reticence balling up inside of him at the idea.

"Well . . . I suppose, _technically, _but . . . come on, Mike, you don't really want to watch me just - "

"Yes! Yes, I do! _Please, _Ralph, _please _show me? Pretty please?" she pleaded sweetly, clasping her hands again and batting her green eyes at him in an expression so uncannily similar to Vanellope's puppy-dog stare that it was downright spooky. Ralph did a slight double-take at it, groaning inwardly as he realized that Mike's begging face was having the same effect on him as its nine-year-old counterpart. _What __**was **__it with him and big, blinking girly-eyes? Why couldn't he __**ever**__ say no to them?_

Knowing that it was pointless to resist, Ralph stood up from leaning over the window and sighed, giving her a reluctant nod of agreement.

"Al_right_," he muttered. "A _quick _demonstration."

Mike gave a tiny gasp of delight, hugging her clasped hands over her heart.

"Really? _Oooh, _Ralph, thank you! This is going to be so exciting!" she cried . . . then, something out the window seemed to momentarily catch her eyes, and she paused . . . then gasped again, her eyes widening as another idea visibly struck her. She held her hands at chest height, crouching down slightly as if suddenly ready to spring. "_Ralph! _Can I go down _with_ you?"

Ralph blinked, his train of thought skipping and almost derailing.

"Well . . . _yeah,_ what?_ . . . _I thought that was the whole idea?" he stated confusedly, lifting one hand to scratch his head.

Mike smiled hugely at him in response, and then, with another shrill noise of elation . . . and not a single other sign of warning . . . she suddenly jumped three feet straight into the air, tucking her legs up tightly in mid leap and flying toward Ralph, who yelped abruptly in shock and did the first this his reflexes screamed at him to do . . . he held out both arms and caught her. Her small weight _thunked _gently against his chest as she landed neatly right in his cradling hands, her arms reaching over his shoulders and circling in a neat loop around his neck. It all happened in an instant, and before he knew it he was standing there blinking and holding Mike bridal-style in his arms, one hand below the small of her back and the other underneath the crook of her knees . . . which, incidentally . . . meant that a good portion of his right hand was cradling directly underneath her behind.

"Okay, I'm ready!" she declared excitedly, scrunching her shoulders once and biting her lip at him.

Ralph barely heard her. It was almost as much as he could do at the moment to keep from fainting. The blood was rushing in his ears so loudly that everything else filtered underneath it in a dull, half-muted mutter, almost as if he were underwater. His arms and legs were as rigid as statues, his spine ramrod straight, his stomach veritably doing gymnastics and his right hand struggling to remain _absolutely, stock still _as it grew gradually warmer from the heat of her . . . _her . . . ._

"Ready . . . . for what?" Ralph's voice issued out in a hoarse, tiny squeak, speaking aloud only to disrupt the line of thought he dare not follow.

She blinked, but her smile didn't flicker.

"To climb down the building with you!" she answered brightly, apparently wholly undeterred by his floored expression.

For a few seconds, his heart still hammering in his mouth, Ralph just stared at her unflinching glow of enthusiasm, the brilliant green of her eyes sitting there just inches from his, captivating him completely for a split second, like a hypnotist's watch . . . then, he twitched and forced himself deliberately back into coherence, mentally dousing himself with a bucket of psychological ice water and working fervently to occupy his thoughts instead with the task at hand.

Without another word of protest . . . afraid of what he might say if he spoke again, at that moment . . . he adjusted Mike carefully into one arm ( desperately fighting to ignore the fact that this meant she was now sitting _completely _in his left hand, her arms still wrapped around his neck and smiling obliviously, as if his palm were no different than a chair ) and worked one foot awkwardly through the window, stepping up onto the ledge and holding his breath as he maneuvered trickily to squeeze the two of them together through the frame. Finally, letting out a sharp exhale of simultaneous relief and tension, Ralph swung outside with his free arm hooked firmly on the sill, the refreshing evening air washing over him, helping to cool him off just enough so that he could keep his mind at least partially clear. Moving as swiftly as he could while still cradling Mike carefully against his shoulder, Ralph began climbing backwards down the brick wall, peering back over his free side to make sure of his footholds as they gradually descended.

Michelangela was practically vibrating with excitement, sucking in small exhilarated gasps and tightening her arms around his neck every time he made an abrupt move.

"Oh, my, _goodness!" _she squeaked, laughing and hunching closer to him as he swung from one arm around the corner of the house, the proximity of her face and her heartbeat making it incredibly difficult for him to stay focused. "Ralph . . . this . . . I think this might be the most dangerous thing I've ever _done!" _She said it happily, as if considering it a monumental achievement.

For one fleeting instant, she leaned so far forward on one of his downswings that the surface of her cheek just barely grazed his for a fraction of a second . . . the instantaneous contact of softness and warmth was enough to make his whole body freeze up for a brief moment, the two of them just hanging there together from the side of the wall like so much Peach and Donkey-Kong.

Swallowing thickly, Ralph managed a small, stiff nod of agreement.

"Yeah . . . . me . . . m-me _too," _he muttered, and continued climbing down.

A/N: Mmmmyes. Reviews make me smile!


	18. Chapter 17: The Stars Glow For You

A/N: Sorry this chapter was a little longer wait . . . . been all sorts of busy this week!

At the suggestion of a couple reviewers ( and also because it's really just high time I got one ) I've started a deviantArt account ( under the name Motorchickensmile, because apparently usernames have to be shorter on that site :P ). Currently, I'm pretty much using it almost exclusively post art related to this story . . . so far it's mostly the various cover pictures I've been rotating, but I have a feeling some interesting companion illustrations may find their way there as the story progresses. ;) So check it out if you're interested!

Enjoy the chapter!

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 17: The Stars Glow For You_

It was a few minutes past sunset, and a thin, blazing line of electric orange was hovering like a static lightning streak at the edge of the horizon over the steadily darkening ocean. The sky overhead was an endless, glowing ceiling of rust red, the edges of deep blue nighttime just beginning to creep over the tops of the mountains.

Ralph stood on the beach, feeling a bit unsure of his footing on the loose sand and squeezed in amidst the towering black rock formations cropping up all around him, loose boulders twice the size of his shack back home littered here and there along the shoreline, half buried. He cleared his throat, shifting his weight awkwardly from foot to foot and wriggling his toes in the cold, pale sand.

As soon as he made a sound, Mike - who was sitting patiently, perched Indian-style on top of a large, dome-shaped rock with her hands clasped around her ankles - perked up and leaned eagerly forward, her eyes like two green headlights beaming excitedly at him through the waning twilight.

Ralph felt himself tense up lightly under her expectant gaze. He flexed his fingers a few times and gulped back a thick swallow.

_What was the big deal? All she wanted was to watch him wreck something . . . a couple of harmless __**rocks, **__no less. He should be able to do this in his sleep. Why in the world was he suddenly so nervous?_

Deliberately ignoring the obvious answer to that question, Ralph coughed lightly and stretched his arms out in front of him, trying to look as if he were just casually warming up instead of trying to force the anxious jittering out of his muscles.

"_Ssssooo . . . _uh . . . . well, to, ah, to start with . . . " he began haltingly, darting a self-conscious glance at Mike from the corner of his eye. She was practically tipping forward off of the rock, propping herself up on her arms and watching him with a fascinated, almost unblinking smile. Ralph quickly looked away.

_This was turning out to be a lot harder in reality than he had pictured it in his head. No one had ever asked him to give a wrecking __**demonstration **__before . . . _

" . . . to start with . . . ah . . . . _in _wrecking . . . well, there are basically only two schools of motion . . . the, ah . . . the _horizontal," _he paused, and punched forward through the air with one hand, his brain racing to try and think of an intelligent, organized-sounding way of explaining a very unintelligent, unorganized process, " . . . and . . . the, ah, the _vertical," _he pronounced carefully, punching downward with the other hand and slamming one fist into the beach, sending up a small burst of sand. He stole another peek at Mike. She was staring in rapt attention, hanging on his every word as if she were going to be quizzed on it later. He froze there for a second with his fist half buried in the sand, then straightened up quickly, awkwardly covering his mouth and clearing his throat.

" . . . . yeah . . . two, ah . . . two schools of motion. Right. So, apart from that, it's really just a matter of . . . um . . . determining the necessary, ah . . . number of squared foot-pounds to apply to the . . . axis of, the . . . . _smash _ratio, to achieve maximum . . . . ah . . . well . . . _smashing. _Uh . . . like, ah, like _so."_

Sensing that he was starting to talk himself into a corner, Ralph quickly cut short his phony explanation and turned to address the nearest rock, a boulder roughly the same size as himself, resting in a trough of other smaller stones. Squinting at it thoughtfully for a few seconds, then nodding to himself, Ralph took a short breath, reared back with his right fist, and punched straight forward with all his might, grunting heavily at the moment his fist made contact. The rock turned out to be a bit harder than he'd surmised, his knuckles giving way slightly with a soft _krick _as they hit the rough surface . . . but the sound was drowned out by a much louder _CCKKCCRA-ACK, _as a huge fissure split through the boulder from the point of impact and crumbled it into a dozen fragments, collapsing it into a pile of rubble.

Ralph stepped back and shook his hand a few times, clenching his teeth slightly at the smarting in his knuckles . . . then, he turned and caught Mike's reaction in the corner of his eye and froze.

Her mouth was hanging wide open and her eyes were glued to the pulverized boulder in a bugged, expressionless stare. For a full five seconds she just sat there, boggling in complete silence until her jaw began to work soundlessly again. She pushed her bangs up off her forehead with one hand and held it there, sliding further forward until she lost her balance and nearly fell off of the rock, jerking back quickly to right herself and finally finding her voice.

"You . . . y-you just . . . with, the . . . in one . . . and _it . . . _from _your . . . . "_

Ralph rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and chuckled embarrassedly, grateful that it had grown too dark to clearly make out the color rising in his cheeks.

"Well . . . that's the _general _idea, anyway," he muttered sheepishly.

Mike stared, totally flabbergasted, for a second longer, then made a high-pitched sound of utter amazement and scrambled down off the rock, jumping to her feet in the sand and holding her hands disbelievingly toward him.

_"Ralph!" _she cried. "That was . . . that was the most _incredible_ thing I've ever SEEN! I don't even know what to . . . . . do it again, do it a_gain!"_

His jitters abruptly gone, and replaced instead by a warm, growing, almost giddy sense of satisfaction, Ralph was only too happy to oblige. He looked around briefly and squared off against another rock, this time an enormous, leaning tower that arched five feet over his head. He pointed at it and glanced toward Mike.

"Maybe, like . . . this one?" he said innocently, unable to resist teasing lightly at Mike's impatient excitement. She nodded fervently, her teeth flashing in the encroaching semi-darkness as she smiled. Ralph felt as if his heart was swelling. "Al_right," _he shrugged in feigned reluctance.

This time holding his arm back a second longer for dramatic effect before pounding forward, he battered the towering rock face repeatedly with rapid, booming _one-two _punches_, _both hands chipping away until the formation crippled with a sharp, dangerous _CRACK _and split into pieces, the upper half of the stone breaking loose and slowly sliding towards Ralph like a felled tree. Mike gasped and was about to cry out, but he coolly shot one fist straight up over his head and let the rock crash against it, breaking in two and falling harmlessly around him, sending up sprays of sand as they _thumped _heavily to the ground.

Mike clapped her hands and bit back a delighted squeal. Flashing her a quick smile, Ralph bent over and began pummeling one of the huge fallen segments with both hands, the way he had used to pummel down a place to sleep in the brick pile at home . . . he kept going until the rectangular boulder had been reduced to gravel, then straightened up proudly and dusted his knuckles off, breathing just a little heavily.

Giggling and squinting one eye in fascinated amazement, Mike tiptoed across the sand and picked up one of the tiny pebbles from the heap, holding it close to her face and turning it around in her fingers.

_"Wow," _she whispered, then looked up at him with a dazzling spark in her eyes that made his heart begin to beat faster. "You really do have an extraordinary talent, Wreck-It Ralph."

His blush darkened, and he let out a bashful, involuntary snort of happiness as he shrugged and quickly looked away.

"What? _No, _that's . . .it's nothing," he protested only-half heartedly, unable to straighten out his obstinate smile. "_You _have talent. I just have a knack for breaking things."

"No, I mean it! Don't sell yourself short!" Mike insisted, leaning closer and giving him a playful shove, a shudder of heat coursing through him from the brief push of her hands on his middle. "Just _think _of all the things you could do_ . . . _all the things you could make_, _that you wouldn't even need _tools_ for . . . "

Ralph shook his head and crinkled his nose dubiously at her, but couldn't help chuckling.

"You might feel differently about that if you'd been there when I was building my _house_," he joked, half-seriously.

Mike narrowed her eyes at him, pinning him with a mock glare that she couldn't keep straight for more than a few seconds. Snorting funnily to herself and not even trying to be discrete, she picked up a small handful of the gravel and threw it at him playfully.

"Hey!" Ralph laughed, raising one hand to shield himself as the shower of little stones bounced off his chest and his palm. Mike darted away before he could retaliate, ducking behind a large boulder nearby and peering over it at him. Ralph crouched down and edged sideways around the rock like a crab, then jumped quickly forward and reached over it to scoop his fingers through the sand, sending a wave of it spraying over her legs. Mike yelped and scurried back again, laughing as she bent over and felt around on the beach, closing her fingers around a smooth stone the size of a golf ball.

"Take _that!" _she cried teasingly, and pitched the rock at him.

Without batting an eyelid, Ralph reflexively balled his hand up and swung at the projectile, deflecting it off his knuckles like a ricocheting bullet and sending it shooting into the side of another rock face, where it cracked into pieces with a puff of dust.

Both of them stared quietly for a few seconds at the spot where it had hit. When Ralph looked back at Mike, there was suddenly a sneaking, mischievous tilt to her smile, an expression that he had never seen on her before creeping gradually over her features. She bent down again, searching briefly until she spotted another rock . . . this one about the size of a baseball . . . and picked it up, tossing it a few times to herself and turning to tilt one eyebrow curiously in his direction. Then, with a devious gleam flashing quickly across her face, she pulled back and lobbed the stone as hard as she could. Ralph easily stopped it again, this time punching it deliberately so that it burst against his fist, shattering in a tiny explosion of pebbles and dust.

Mike let out a thrilled gasp of laughter and dove quickly over a bank of rocks, ducking down and crouching out of sight.

Ralph blinked. A suspicious, but at the same time increasingly charmed smile began tugging at his mouth.

"Uh, Mike? . . . . . _Michelangela?" _Ralph tested cautiously, taking a small step forward when she didn't answer and craning his neck to peer over the rocks. As soon as his feet shuffled audibly in the sand, her wild, curly head immediately popped up from behind the stone pile, grinning at him with one grapefruit-sized rock held poised in her hand and an armful of others clutched haphazardly to her chest.

Ralph froze with his hands hovering at his sides, his eyes popping wide and his mouth opening in a startled breath.

"Mmm_iiiike!" _he warned slowly, inching a step backward and raising one hand protectively in front of him. "Don't you _even . . . "_

The hint of amusement in his voice betraying him, Mike ignored his warning and defiantly hurled the rock, throwing her whole upper body into the motion and launching it straight at him with all her might. Ralph punched it clean out of the air without missing a step, chuckling as it crumbled like a snowball and straightening back up just in time to shield himself from a second shot, this one bouncing harmlessly off his forearm. He was beginning to notice that the rocks in Masterwork weren't all entirely realistic . . . the smaller they were, the more easily they disintegrated. The stones Mike was throwing at him felt more like abnormally hard dirt clods than actual rocks . . . . but he didn't have time to think about it for long before she had leapt out from behind her shelter and begun chasing him down the beach, showering him with a continual barrage of baseball-sized stones.

Ralph ducked and wove clumsily between the maze of boulders, his feet dragging in the sand, laughing as he tried only half-heartedly to avoid her. He alternated both arms, deflecting each rock back and forth until she had finally run out of ammunition and slowed to a stop, smiling at him breathlessly as she bent over to rest her hands on her knees, panting lightly.

"_Ha . . . _is that . . . ha _ha . . . _is _that_ all you got?" Ralph jeered, only slightly out of breath himself.

Narrowing her eyes in a devious grin and standing up straight, Mike suddenly darted her hands up to her chest, and quick as lightning, popped open the top four buttons of her smock, revealing one rapid glimpse of a wide, snug red bandeau before snaking her hand inside and snatching something from an interior pocket. Before Ralph could so much as blink, let alone begin to process what was happening ( or what he'd almost _thought _was happening ), she had pulled out a familiar, two-foot paintbrush with a thick wooden handle and was brandishing it toward him.

Ralph's eyes popped at the magically produced brush, a sting of physical memory rushing back to him at the sight of it. He took a step back, quickly holding his hands up to shield himself.

"Whoa, _whoa,_ _Mike, _hang on a second!" he stammered desperately.

Ignoring his cries of protest, Mike only grinned at him.

"Block _this!" _she cackled playfully, raising the brush higher and tightening her grip on the handle . . . . but then, just as Ralph was preparing to flinch under another slap of paint, she surprised him by abruptly spinning around and swinging the brush with both hands like a baseball bat in the direction opposite him. As she whirled around, a streak of turquoise paint darted out of the bristles, snaking straight through the air and in one lightning-fast motion, curling around a four-foot-wide boulder like the loop of a lasso. Without pausing, continuing around in her smooth, circular motion, Mike let out a small, gleeful grunt of effort and swung the huge rock around her as easily as if it were a ball on a string, the line of paint stretching and contracting to release the boulder at the exact right instant to send it hurtling directly towards Ralph.

His brain snapping reflexively into defense mode a split second before it was too late, Ralph flailed his arms in the air once with a shocked yelp and thrust his right fist straight forward at the rapidly approaching target. The boulder hit his outstretched knuckles with the force of an oncoming truck, shattering into pieces on impact but rocketing him flat onto his back and sending him skidding twenty feet across the beach, leaving behind a long, straight trench dug into the sand.

When he finally slid to a stop . . . dazed, but unhurt . . . Ralph lay there motionless for a few seconds, blinking in stunned silence up at the darkening sky. Slowly, his head still reeling, he propped himself up into a sitting position, shaking himself a few times. A small cascade of sand fell down from his hair and shoulders.

Mike had frozen with her brush poised in midair, her knees bent in a crouched batter's stance and her eyes wide and blinking at him. The long, circling streak of turquoise paint hovered around her in midair for a few seconds, then fizzled into a choppy grid of pixels and disappeared.

Her face paling, Mike jerked suddenly back to reality and dropped the brush without looking at it, dashing across the beach and skidding to her knees in the sand beside Ralph, covering her mouth with both hands and staring at him apologetically.

"Oh, my _gosh . . . _oh, Ralph, I'm such an _idiot! _I'm so sorry, I don't know what I was . . . . I didn't _hurt_ you, did I?"

Ralph gaped at her speechlessly for another second, then raised his eyebrows and let out a loud, incredulous _guffaw_, clapping one hand to his forehead and laughing out loud. Mike looked puzzled for an instant, then relaxed into a slump of relief.

"_Hurt? _Of course I'm not hurt, I just . . . . I can't believe what just happened!"

Mike winced. "Yeah . . . I . . . I'm _really, _really sorry, Ralph . . . I just . . . I've never horsed around like this before, you know? I guess I just let myself get carried aw - "

"I'm talking about what you did with that _rock!" _Ralph cut her off, pointing to the crumbled remains of the boulder twenty feet away. He glanced down at Mike's skinny arms and her small, fragile-looking hands. "That . . . that thing must have weighed three hundred pounds! It was practically twice your size! How . . . how in the _heck _did you . . . ?"

Mike blinked at his flabbergasted expression, then frowned thoughtfully and shrugged.

"Uuumm . . . I don't know," she muttered. "I just sort of did it."

Ralph looked again at her thin, wiry shoulders, shaking his head in disbelief. She looked as if she had barely enough muscle to do a push-up.

"Are you . . . do you have, like . . . . _super strength_, or something? As part of your programming, I mean?"

Mike made a weird face at him, crinkling her nose ludicrously.

"Of course not! I'm just a _painter. _The only things I have that could count as super-powers are good motor-skills and an eye for pro_portion." _She narrowed her eyes, holding her chin and looking down ponderously for a moment . . . then, she jerked back up again and snapped her fingers, the familiar light that always signaled the sudden recovery of a glitched memory twinkling in her eyes."That's it! It must be the _brush!"_

Mike jumped to her feet and ran back to retrieve her Battle-strokes paintbrush from where it was still lying in the sand. Lowering one eyebrow curiously, Ralph clambered heavily to his feet and followed after her. The last traces of warm color had finally faded from the horizon, and the sky overhead was now a dark, clear, ink blue, the stars and a full moon beaming down in a pale, surprisingly bright wash of light. Mike picked up her paintbrush and lifted it into the moonlight, peering curiously at it with a skeptical frown.

"Hmmmm," she murmured lowly, lifting her gaze and looking contemplatively around them for a moment. "Let's test it."

Ralph watched in captivated interest as Mike hunted around briefly for a suitable rock, coming to a stop at a loose boulder nearby that was slightly smaller than the one she'd boomeranged at him and nearly crushed him with. Tucking her brush back into her smock for a moment, Mike pushed her already rolled-up sleeves higher over her elbows and crouched down beside the small boulder, eyeing it determinedly. She took a deep breath, flexed her fingers, and then threw all of her weight against the rock, her arms shoving tense and straight against it as her feet slid uselessly in the sand, her shoulders trembling and her cheeks puffing out in vain effort. The stone didn't budge. Despite his lingering fascination, Ralph choked as he held back an involuntary snort of laughter.

Mike let out her breath in an exhausted burst, her shoulders collapsing as she straightened back up and pressed both hands on the small of her back.

"O_kay_," she admitted somewhat breathlessly, glancing over at Ralph and wiping the back of her hand over her forehead. "So . . . _definitely_ no super strength."

Ralph nodded in confirmation and crossed his arms, still struggling to keep a straight face. Slowly regaining her breath, Mike pulled the Battle-strokes brush out of her smock again and adjusted her grip on the handle, widening her stance and backing away from the rock.

"You, ah . . . might want to stand back a bit."

Ralph blinked, then started with comprehension and quickly staggered several feet backward, tensing his arms and preparing to deflect if necessary. He held his breath as he watched Mike carefully aim the tip of the brush toward the boulder, then slowly drawing it back over her shoulder. She hesitated a second longer, then, sucking in a deep breath and squeezing her eyes shut, swung away. A streak of paint, bright pink this time, darted out right on cue and wrapped around the boulder, securing it tightly.

Feeling her line go taut, Mike responsively heaved up on the brush while simultaneously turning on her heel, pulling the rock up in to the air over one shoulder and gradually building momentum. Ralph stared speechlessly as she spun faster and faster on her heels, swinging the boulder in a five foot circle around her from its paint-stroke tether until it was almost a blur . . . . then, with a sharp cry of effort, abruptly snapping it loose and letting it fly like a two-hundred pound shot-put. It sailed up into the air in a sixty degree arch, slowing just for an instant as it peaked about two stories up, then plummeting back down like a comet, headed straight in his direction. Ralph let out a startled yell of terror and ducked, diving forward on his stomach into the sand just as the boulder collided down into the rock face behind him with a deafening crash.

When he dared to look up after a few seconds of silence, grimacing and coughing out a mouthful of sand, Mike was staring in his direction with her knees buckled and her shoulders slumped, breathing hard. Ralph rose cautiously to his feet, making a face and spitting once more to get the last grains of sand out of his mouth. He glanced over his shoulder at the remains of the rock, then back at Mike. Their eyes met for a moment in look of stunned intrigue, and Ralph thoughtfully scratched his head.

"Well, ah . . . . I guess that pretty much answers _that_ question, huh?"

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Despite the setting in of nighttime and the crisp, pale sparkle of the stars and the moon in the now completely black sky overhead, the atmosphere in Masterwork was still balmy and warm, refreshed continually by the faint, salty breezes whispering off of the calm ocean. Ralph and Mike sat next to each other on the grassy edge of the bank, their feet dangling over the side of dune as they each stared quietly out at the sea and the stars.

Ralph kept his hands carefully folded between his knees, hunching forward and resting his elbows on his legs. Every so often, he caught himself peering out of the corner of his eye at Mike's profile, then down briefly at the generous gap of space separating them on the edge of the bank. The more he looked at it, the more persistently it began to bother him, until he finally found himself actually contemplating the dangerous idea to close it, to inch slowly towards her until the space was gone. He wasn't sure how long they had been sitting there . . . ten minutes, twenty minutes . . . . when Mike suddenly let out a long, peaceful sigh, startling him out of his reckless, wandering inclinations. He quickly darted his eyes forward again and began twiddling his thumbs fervently. Mike slowly tilted her head further and further skyward until she let herself flop down on her back in the grass. Ralph peeked curiously at her over his shoulder.

"I can't believe I've gone my whole life without ever looking at these stars before," she said quietly, folding her hands over her stomach.

Ralph gave her a soft, lop-sided smile and carefully leaned back to lay on the grass beside her, resting one arm behind his head and laying the other flat at his side, mindfully maintaining the buffer space between them.

"Don't beat yourself up about it . . . three days isn't _too _long," he joked good-naturedly. "Wait until you've been here _thirty years . . . "_

He turned his head toward her, and the expression on her face made him go quiet, his smile straightening. She was suddenly wearing a distant, somber look on her face . . . her eyes were so wide and deep he could actually see the reflection of the stars in them, along with something else . . . a gleaming, silvery outline that shimmered when she blinked. With a hollow pang, he abruptly realized that it was the shine of unshed tears.

"It _feels _longer than that," she whispered. "It feels . . . so much longer."

She blinked again up at the sky, and the silver gleam silently slipped down, wavering and then vanishing as a single, transparent drop of moisture crept from the outer corner of her eye and rolled down her temple. Ralph watched it, his heart thudding almost fearfully, something like a suppressed jolt of panic seizing hold of him.

"Mike," he said, as softly as he could while still being heard, " . . . are you . . . okay?"

She started slightly, turning to look at him and hurriedly dashing her hand over her eyes, wicking away the tears. Ralph breathed a heavy, internal sigh of relief when she smiled again, looking him straight in the eye and nodding reassuringly.

"Yeah. I'm okay."

Her breathy whisper floated up above them into darkness, and for another moment they were both quiet, their gazes suddenly transfixed on one another, locked in a silent connection that Ralph gradually realized was growing smaller and closer. His breath caught in his throat as he abruptly saw that Mike had inched nearer to him, watching him intently with an expression that he couldn't seem to put a name to, but that for some reason seemed to make everything else in the world disappear and grow silent. He felt her hand creep slowly, timidly on top of his . . . and without thinking, without fully knowing what he was doing . . . but for once, not caring at all . . . Ralph turned his palm skyward and closed his fingers gently around her hand, encapsulating its warmth in a little ball that seemed to flutter against his skin like a heartbeat.

For a long, long moment, they laid there quietly in the grass, their hands the only point of contact between them.

It might have been only a few minutes later . . . or for all he knew, it might have been an hour . . . when Mike's hand moved inside of his, her fingers curling tighter as a gentle smile warmed her face. Then, she spoke, and as her words drifted softly through the foggy haze of his dreamlike euphoria, they gradually found their way into his mind and suddenly broke him out of the daze, making his heart leap into his mouth and everything else return very swiftly and decisively back to reality.

_"I like you, Ralph."_

It wasn't the words themselves . . . it was the deep, throaty, fearless way she said them that made Ralph's head suddenly swim and his palms begin to sweat. His mouth opened and hovered soundlessly for a moment . . . his brain was screaming at him to answer her, but his voice wasn't cooperating. It stuck in his throat like a cotton ball, and for an agonizing half-minute the only noise that he could produce was a dull, croaking squeak.

The heat from his right hand shot uncomfortably up into his chest, then into his face, and all of a sudden Ralph felt himself letting go of Mike's hand as quickly and gently as possible. He sat bolt upright and turned his face away, holding one hand on the back of his neck and swallowing repeatedly, searching frantically for words, _any _words. He heard Mike sit up beside him, saw the moonlit halo of her hair in the periphery of his vision as she leaned perplexedly forward to peer at his face.

"Is . . . something wrong?" she asked timidly.

His heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Ralph swallowed again and forced himself to take a breath, inhaling slowly and shakily, still not able to look her in the eye.

_Just say it, _he tried to order himself calmly, closing his eyes for a second and taking another steadying breath.

_Four, easy little words . . . . I, like, you, __**too**__._

_Come on, you can do it. Just four little words._

Summoning as much nerve as he could muster, Ralph quickly opened his mouth and jerked his head back to look her in the face . . . . but the instant he did, the instant her puzzled, dewy eyes slipped back into his vision, the wind was immediately sucked out of his sails and his courage abandoned him. He gulped down a low gurgling sound in his throat and heard himself sputter out the first words that would come to him.

"I think I'd better get going."

Mike blinked. For a split second - just long enough for Ralph to mentally kick himself - she looked vaguely hurt, but she seemed to recover the next second and smiled instead, nodding obligingly and slowly rising to her feet.

"I understand. It is getting a little late, isn't it?"

It wasn't . . . at least, not late enough that Ralph would have given a second thought to staying longer, had he not panicked and blurted it out like an idiot . . . . . but the damage was done. He'd already said it . . . he had no choice but to nod reluctantly in feigned agreement and stand up, awkwardly avoiding her direct gaze.

"Well . . . . I'll, uh, I'll walk you to the tunnel then, shall I?"

Ralph only nodded again, turning to follow her at a short distance as she led the way across the yard toward the footpath, inwardly cursing himself violently as they went.

_Stupid, stupid, MORON! _

_Four words! You couldn't say four, stupid, words?_

_The girl of your dreams says she __**likes **__you, and all you can say is "I think I'd better be GOING?!"_

_IDIOT!_

He was clenching his teeth, muttering vehement, indiscernible obscenities just under his breath when Mike abruptly stopped in front of him on the path. He nearly bumped into her, surprised to look up and see that they were already almost at the edge of the forest, the twin tunnels sitting a half dozen yards off.

Mike turned around, deliberately putting her back to the pair of stone arches with an almost visible shudder which she quickly tried to hide. The moment he saw the distinct, familiar spasm of fear flash across her face, he forgot about being angry and embarrassed with himself. His heart gave a small twinge as Mike cleared her throat shakily and put on a nervous smile that he immediately saw through.

"Well, ah . . . h-here . . . here we are!" she stuttered slightly, fisting her hands in the sides of her smock. "You, you can make it from here on your own . . . right?"

"Uh . . . sure, yeah," Ralph said distractedly, knitting his brow at visible tremor shaking her hands. "Mike . . . can I ask you something?"

She nodded, slowly.

"_Why_ are you so afraid of those tunnels?" he whispered gently.

Mike stared at him uncertainly for a moment, then turned her face away embarrassedly, staring off at a distant spot on the grass.

"I just . . . I can't ex_plain _it," she muttered. "Every time I _look _at them, I get this . . . this horrible feeling, inside, like there's something awful waiting in them . . . but I don't know what." She sighed wearily, peering timidly at him from the corner of her eyes. "You must think I'm being pretty ridiculous, huh?"

Ralph lowered his brow softly and shook his head, looking her deliberately in the eye.

"No. I don't think you're ridiculous. I just think that you're dealing with something most people never have to deal with. And I think, that if you let me . . . . I could you help you beat it."

She looked back up at him, and the twinge of uncertainty in her face slowly melted into a hopeful smile.

"I think . . . maybe you're right," she said quietly, the faintest blush of color warming her cheeks in the pale moonlight. "Ralph . . . will . . . . will you come to see me again?"

His heart did an instantaneous back-flip . . . he somehow managed to keep from punching the air triumphantly and smiled back instead.

"How does tomorrow night sound?"

Mike beamed and nodded once, schooling her features into a calm look of approval. "Sounds perfect."

Ralph grinned and held his hand out to her, which she shook cordially, her mouth struggling to keep from cracking into a giggle.

"Well . . . I guess . . . until tomorrow, then," Ralph said, reluctantly letting going and edging slowly away down the path with his back to the tunnels. Mike turned to watch him leave, folding her arms against her chest and waving with her fingertips, her smile turning just a bit sad.

"Yeah . . . until tomorrow," she echoed.

"Goodnight . . . Mike," Ralph raised his voice slightly to carry to her over the slowly growing distance between them.

"Goodnight, Ralph."

He watched her until he reached the edge of the forest wall, pausing at the mouth of the left stone archway. Mike lingered a second longer, then turned reluctantly and began walking back up the path.

Then, suddenly, as his eyes narrowed on the bright shape of her back retreating in the darkness, the moonlight illuminating her smock in a pale blue glow, something inside him flared up with a blazing stab of courage, and he sucked in a sharp breath through his nostrils and cupped one hand at the side of his mouth, shouting bluntly across the rolling expanse of grass.

"MIKE."

She paused and turned back to look at him, a gentle breeze wafting the ends of her hair. She was too far and it was too dark for him to make out her expression, but if he squinted, he could still just see the two bright green pinpricks of her eyes, shining in her face like little stars of their own.

_Come on, numbskull, and say it!_

He took another deep breath, and exhaled.

"MIKE . . . I . . . . I like you, too."

The green pinpricks twinkled responsively, and without waiting for her to reply . . . his heart hammering in his mouth, his momentary burst of courage sizzling like a doused ember in the pit of his stomach . . . Ralph turned and disappeared into the tunnel.

A/N: So, I promise that this is going to be the last chapter comprised purely of fluff for a while . . . there IS a plot buried somewhere in all this saccharine indulgence, I swear, and I _am_ building up to it! Reviews make me smile!


	19. Chapter 18: Alert Level L

A/N: Maybe it's just the drowsiness talking, but I'm actually quite pleased with how this chapter turned out. Hope you all enjoy it as well!

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 18: Alert Level L_

Before Ralph had even made it down the final leg of the Masterwork tunnel, as soon as he came within the last remaining dozen yards of dark passageway with the circle of light opening at the end, he sensed that something unusual was going on in Game Central Station . . . but it wasn't until he finally stepped out into the gray anteroom between the two gates that he could put his finger on just what it was that was out of the ordinary.

It was the _noise. _The closer he drew to the station portal, the louder it grew . . . a chaotic, raucous hubbub of hundreds of voices all chattering and shouting at once, clamoring over one another to be heard and thickening the atmosphere almost like a tangible smog. The unnerving sound immediately transported Ralph back to the night of the Pac-down incident, and his worrying, knee-jerk first thought was that something similar had to be happening that very moment. Narrowing his brow anxiously, he hurried toward the plug gate.

As the central chamber of the station came into view, the source of the din quickly became apparent . . . . Ralph's jaw dropped slightly at the sheer size of the crowd sprawling out before him. He had never seen so many characters crammed into the station in his life . . . there were at least three times as many as there had been during the Pac-down. The crowd was so dense that you could scarcely see the floor, and everyone seemed to be talking at the same time, shouting over the heads of others nearby, asking questions to nobody in particular, or complaining animatedly back and forth with their neighbors.

Half of him consumed with curiosity and the other half with apprehension, Ralph strode quickly up to the end of the portal . . . but instead of passing through, he abruptly collided face first with a solid, invisible barrier, letting out a startled _oof _as his nose flattened against the unseen wall. He bounced back in blunt surprise, shaking his head as a wave of visible static rippled out from the point he had hit, spreading over the flat, vertical surface and briefly illuming the presence of the barrier.

"What the . . . ?" Ralph scrunched his nose incredulously, narrowing his eyes and tapping the air experimentally. His fingertip struck the transparent wall, smaller shimmers of static undulating out from the spot. He laid one hand flat on it, then pounded against it twice with his fist, a jolt of confused irritation puckering his brow.

"HEY! What _gives?" _he demanded angrily, leaning to the left, then the right, trying to peer out toward either side of the gate beyond the barrier. A handful of nearby characters heard his voice, turned to look at him, and just shrugged sympathetically, a few shaking their heads and gesturing in his direction as they argued fervently with each other.

Ralph grit his teeth in frustration, pulling back one fist and preparing to punch the virtual wall when a surge protector suddenly fizzled up directly in front of him on the other side, startling him and making him totter backward off balance. He lowered his fist and blinked confusedly at the short, blue, uniformed woman, who was holding multiple clipboards in her arms and scanning frantically through each of them in turn.

She was an SP Ralph had never seen before, and she looked as if she were about to have a nervous breakdown any second. Her short, dark hair was wildly mussed and her uniform was disheveled, her tie beginning to come loose. Her eyes darted twitchily back and forth over the half dozen clipboards, her hands shaking as she flipped desperately through the pages. Her temples and armpits were sweating visibly. For a full twenty seconds she stood there in front of Ralph without looking up at him, the two of them invisibly separated by the portal barrier. After a long, awkward pause, Ralph cleared his throat lightly.

"Hey, uh . . . is everything alright, lady?"

The SP jolted as if she'd been pinched, jerking her head up to shoot him a frazzled, incredulous glare.

"No! _NO! _Everything is _emphatically _NOT alright!"

"Okay, okay, sorry! _Sheesh!_" Ralph apologized quickly, then murmured under his breath. "So . . . what's going - "

"Name!" the surge protector demanded, interrupting him bluntly and fumbling with her clipboards again. Ralph heaved a small, exasperated sigh.

"Wreck-It _Ralph," _he muttered begrudgingly.

"Where from?"

"Fix-It Felix Jr.," he rolled his eyes in annoyance. _Honestly . . . __**how**__ many years had security been asking him these same questions?_

The SP checked something off on one of the sheets of paper. "What was your business in Masterwork tonight?"

Ralph started, a hollow pit instantly opening in his stomach and his face warming as he reeled slightly from the unorthodox question, the shrill, unceremonious tone of her voice catching him off guard.

"Wha . . . why do you need to know that?"

"I don't have time for your _backtalk, _sir! Just answer the question!"

Ralph narrowed his brow, incensed by her blatant rudeness. "I was visiting a _friend," _he replied shortly.

"Approximately what time did you enter this game?"

"_What? _What time did I - what is this!?"

"TIME!" the surge protector fairly shrieked, her eyes bugging and twitching at him in a relentless scowl.

"_Eight o'clock, _okay? Now will you _please _tell me what's going on here?"

_"Current destination!" _the SP snapped sharply, ignoring his question.

Ralph tossed his head back and snarled in frustration.

"Fix-It Felix Jr., FIX-IT FELIX JR! _TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON!"_

Without batting an eyelid at his furious outburst, the SP made another check on her paper and nodded glibly. Then, craning her neck to peer over her armful of clipboards, she punched in a short code on the buttons of her wristwatch, and a horizontal line of static abruptly traced down the portal entrance, vanishing into the floor with an electric fizz. Ralph jumped in surprise and groped the air with one hand . . . finding that the barrier was gone, he hurriedly rushed forward across the threshold of the gate without wasting any time.

"Game Central Station is currently on Alert Level _L,_ a.k.a _full lockdown_," the surge protector rattled off mechanically, anxiously reshuffling her papers without glancing back at Ralph. "Please wait quietly in the transit area for further instructions."

Without another word, she phased back into the floor and vanished. A single warning alarm sounded, and the line of static ran back up the Masterwork gate, the barrier shimmering back into place with a brief flash and then becoming transparent again.

Ralph blinked incredulously for a few seconds at the spot where the SP had been standing, then turned and looked back into the chaotic sea of characters filling the station. There was a half-moon of empty space less than twelve feet wide between the closed-off game portal and the edge of the multitude, and Ralph was becoming increasingly aware of a tense feeling of claustrophobia tightening inside of him. Crowds of any size generally weren't his _favorite_ thing in the world . . . but this was a crowd the likes of which he had never seen. Surveying the station anxiously with his eyes, he began to fear that he might not be able to squeeze his way through it at _all_, at least not without inciting some very serious displeasure on the part of his fellow trapped onlookers.

Just as he was on the verge of considering a desperate attempt to barrel through the crowd linebacker style, a sharp, piercing whistle cut through the drowning hubbub of voices and instantly drew Ralph's attention. _He recognized that whistle . . . _swiveling his head eagerly in search of the sound's origin point, Ralph slumped his shoulders and breathed a small exhale of relief when he abruptly spotted Vanellope, waving frantically to him over the heads of the crowd. She was perched atop one of the electronic message screens, far away in the middle of the station, gesturing fervently with both hands for Ralph to come over.

Ralph made a face, and in reply motioned to the dense wall of characters blocking him off at the Masterwork gate, raising both eyebrows and shrugging at her meaningfully. Vanellope narrowed her eyes in a stubborn glare and planted one hand on her hip, pointing first to him, then down with the other in an unyielding gesture of demand. For a full minute, they signaled silently to each other across the crowd in spontaneous, increasingly animated sign language, each demanding that the other one make the pilgrimage to their side of the station, until finally Ralph growled and threw his hands up in defeat. Muttering irately under his breath and clenching his fists, Ralph hunched his shoulders around his ears and begrudgingly set off into the swarm.

His progress was even slower and more grueling than he'd predicted. A small portion of the unfortunate characters milling between himself and Vanellope tried to squeeze politely out of his way, but the sheer number of bodies crammed into the space made it an almost futile pursuit . . . and the rest of them didn't so much as make an attempt to move aside. At the midway point, when his timid pleas and protestations were going completely ignored and his temper was on the verge of flaring up, Ralph simply put his head down and began pushing . . . he managed to shove his way successfully through half a platoon of Green Berets, but hadn't gotten ten feet before accidentally plowing down a stocky woman wearing a horned helmet. He halted immediately with a horrified wince . . . and then, to make matters worse, the woman turned out to be Vikarella, one of his more disastrous "dates" from the DDR party. She took one look at him and broke into mortified sobbing, elbowing her way away from him and ignoring his stammered apology.

By the time Ralph finally reached Vanellope's message board, there was a trailing path of infuriated game characters cut straight through to the Masterwork gate. Slightly out of breath, Ralph put his hands on his hips and pointed a daggered glare up at his diminutive friend. Vanellope glared back and shrugged blankly, sitting down on the edge of the sign to dangle her feet over the edge.

"What? _What?" _she demanded when Ralph didn't say anything. "What did you want me to do? Do you have any idea how close I came to getting trampled in there earlier? I'd have been stepped on by Lamar hours ago if I hadn't managed to get up on _this_ thing!" she pointed down at the sign, then shot a sideways glance at a stegosaurus from the Jurassic Park first-person shooter who was towering nearby, hedged in precariously by characters on all sides. "No offense, Lamar."

The stegosaurus rolled his eyes at her.

Ralph sighed heavily and massaged his forehead with one hand. "Forget it, I'm _here_. Now _please . . . _for the sweet love of _Atari, _will you TELL ME WHAT THE _HECK IS GOING ON?"_

Vanellope flattened her mouth into a straight line and nodded acquiescingly, motioning for Ralph to help her down. He held his hand up for her to step onto, and she sat down cross-legged in his palm. He raised one eyebrow at her.

"Listen, I am not going down _there _again," she snapped bitterly, pointing to the floor which was almost wholly obscured by hundreds of feet. "You don't know what it's like being three and a half feet high in this mob. The smell a_lone . . . _"

"Fine, _fine," _Ralph muttered, turning around to lean his back against the electronic message board ( which was currently playing a brief clip on loop of Sonic the Hedgehog, repeating over and over that the station was currently in lockdown mode and to please await further instructions ) and hold Vanellope protectively at chest height. She shifted to face toward him with her legs dangling between his fingers. She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

"O_kay," _she began, and Ralph could sense a lengthy, weary explanation forthcoming. "To begin with . . . . we're in lockdown because there's something wrong with the surge protectors. _All _of them."

Ralph blinked. "Something _wrong? _Wrong _how_?"

"Nobody knows! Apparently, when the arcade closed tonight at seven, people starting coming and going from their games as usual, but for some reason there were _no_ surge protectors_ . . . _like, _none, _anywhere. They were just gone. Nobody was watching the gates at all."

His brow narrowing in consternation, Ralph abruptly remembered his suspicion and curiosity at not being stopped on his way into Masterwork earlier that evening, and how he'd been surprised at the apparent absence of the SPs on his way through the station . . . but he'd thought he was only imagining things . . .

Ralph shook himself slightly, pulling his thoughts back to the present.

"Wait just a minute, though . . . if they're _all_ out of commission, then how come I was just _stopped_ by one on the way out of Masterwork? She wouldn't let me through without a full interrogation . . . she wanted to know practically everything but my _shoe size!"_

Vanellope's mouth wriggled slightly, and she peeked once down at his feet with a suppressed snort of laughter.

"About a 26 men's, _I'd_ wager."

Ralph rolled his eyes unappreciatively. Vanellope sniggered once more and cleared her throat.

"Admit it, pal, you . . . _walked . . . _right into that one," she punned, smiling and shaking her head, then gesturing broadly to the surrounding crowd. "Anyway, I wouldn't bother getting worked up about it, because it's happening to _everyone. _Anybody coming out of a game is being stopped, then detained. Why do you think everyone's stuck in here? _Lockdown _means nobody comes into the station without getting a third degree, and once you're _in, _you're not getting out until they say so. And that grouchy SP with the clipboards? She's the only one still around, and she's not a regular security guard. She's the program coordinator, so she never works the floor. Didn't you recognize her voice from those annoying public service announcements?"

Ralph paused for a second, straining to replay the voice in his memory.

"I _guess _you're right . . . . not sure though, it was a little hard to catch the quality of her tone when she was so busy _shrieking _at me," he grumbled.

Vanellope shrugged. "Like I said, join the club. She started making her panicked rounds at about eight-thirty or so, and she's been closing off the gates one by one and corralling everybody in here ever since. She won't tell anybody where the other SPs are or what's wrong with them . . . all we know is, until she gives the all clear, we're _stuck in here."_

"_Stuck in here? _That's . . . . this is ridiculous! What makes them think they can do this?"

"It's called _martial law_, Einstein, they can do whatever they want as long as it's in the name of an _emergency._"

Ralph groaned and fell back against the sign, sliding down it until he plunked down onto the floor. Vanellope crawled out of his hand and adjusted herself to sit on his knees facing him, sighing and resting her head wearily in her palm.

"I hear ya, big guy, but unfortunately there's nothing we can do about it," she muttered. "So we might as well get comfortable."

Ralph whined anxiously and let his hands flop palms up on the floor. "I _hate _crowds," he complained impotently. "If I'd have known _this_ was going on, I would have just stayed in _Masterwork . . ."_

At the mention of the game, Vanellope suddenly perked up, slowly lifting her eyes to peek curiously at his face. He noticed her smiling in his periphery, and narrowed his brow suspiciously at her.

"Say, Va_nellope," _he muttered, turning his head to face her squarely. "Just where were _you _headed when this whole lockdown thing started?"

She shrugged innocently, rolling her eyes skyward. "Oh . . . . nowhere, really, just . . . you know, getting some _fresh air."_

Ralph glowered accusingly. "You were going to _check up on me, _weren't you?"

"No, not ex_actly . . . . _I was just going to wait for you outside the game! You know, just to be supportive, to see how your date went, to - "

"To _c__heck up on me," _Ralph filled in for her. He groaned again, but at the same time couldn't help feeling an affectionate glow of warmth at her desire to make sure he was okay. He pursed his lips exasperatedly and rubbed his knuckles on the top of her head, intentionally mutilating her ponytail. "I'm a _grown man, _Vanellope. Do I really need a nosy, nine-year-old babysitter constantly keeping tabs on me?"

She swatted his hand away and made a pouting face, sulkily pulling out her licorice hair-tie and shaking her head like a dog, so that her wildly messy hair fell down to her shoulders and sprayed out in all directions.

"I would think the answer to that question would be _obvious _by now."

"It was _rhetorical," _Ralph grumbled.

"Yeah, yeah," Vanellope waved him off and bit off a piece of the licorice tie, snapping it loudly in her teeth. As she chewed, a crafty little smile slowly reappeared on her face, and she tilted her eyes curiously toward Ralph. "But, as long as we're _on _the subject . . . . how _did _your date go, Mr. _Grown Man_?"

Both the visual and flesh memory of Mike's hand closed softly inside of his as the two of them lay on their backs in the grass and stared up at the stars instantly came rushing back to him. Ralph blushed and turned his face away, his voice struggling for a brief moment at the back of his throat.

"It was . . . . . . . fine."

Vanellope lowered her eyelids, dissatisfied. "Really. Just 'fine'?"

Ralph nodded, still averting his gaze. "Yup."

"'Fine' enough that you wanted to _stay longer, _evidently," Vanellope grinned slyly.

"What? Who said _that?"_ Ralph demanded, trying to sound nonchalant and failing.

"_You _did. One minute ago."

His blushed darkened. "Oh . . . right."

There was a short moment of silence, and as Ralph continually avoided her direct gaze, Vanellope's smile grew gradually wider and wider until she was grinning at him from ear to ear, her arms folded smugly and her candy-flecked bangs partially obscuring her eyes.

"Something _happened_, didn't it?"

Her calm, authoritative tone hit Ralph like sock in the gut, and his heart began to beat faster for reasons he wasn't entirely sure of.

"_No . . . . _nothing . . . . nothing _happened."_

She lifted her chin confidently. "Oh, I think it did. Uh, _huh . . . . _give it up, Ralphie, it's written all over your face. Something happened, alright. Something _good."_

Ralph swallowed thickly. Vanellope leaned closer to him, her cool gaze penetrating straight into him. "Listen pal, it's no use trying to hide anything from me. You might as well just spill already."

Ralph closed his eyes briefly and gave a tired sigh of defeat. _She was right, of course. In all the time he'd known her, he had never been able to keep a secret from Vanellope when she really made her mind up to get it out of him . . . not even once._

"Alright, _fine," _he muttered, slouching further down against the sign as if trying to hide from invisible onlookers. "You want to know the truth? Well, the truth is . . . . I . . . . I think . . . " he struggled a second longer, then gave up, deflating with a heavy exhale and looking her square in the eye. " . . . .Vanellope . . . . . I think Mike might be the _one."_

For a split second, Vanellope's smile vanished, and she regarded him with a stunned look of complete seriousness . . . . then, her hazel eyes widened and began to sparkle, and her devious grin was replaced by a slowly growing expression of enchantment.

"And?" she pressed eagerly after a moment of silence.

"And . . . . and . . . actually, our date was . . . . it was . . . _amazing," _he finally sighed.

"_And?"_

The heat in his cheeks rising almost feverishly, Ralph swallowed back the urge to cringe bashfully and heard himself admit it out loud in a quiet half-squeak;

"_And . . . . she . . . . _she said she _likes me."_

Vanellope's mouth opened for a few seconds in a silent, smiling gape . . . then she threw her hands up over her head and hooted raucously, staring gleefully at Ralph with wide, delighted eyes.

"Woooo-hooo-hoo-_hoooo! _Ralph, buddy, you _DID IT! _You actually _did it!"_

Vanellope jumped forward and threw her hands around his neck, squeezing him and laughing triumphantly. She clung to him excitedly for a few seconds, then leaned back and giggled in his face, grabbing his cheeks with both hands and pushing them together with her palms.

"I _knew _it, Ham Hands, I just _knew _you could do it! Ooooh, this is so _exciting . . . _our own little Ralphie actually has a _girlfriend!"_

She squealed happily and leaned forward, kissing him quickly on the nose with a loud, intentional "Mmmm_waah!"_

Ralph blinked, frozen in place for a stunned moment with Vanellope's hands still pinching his cheeks. His brain reeled to catch up for a few seconds, then he narrowed his brow determinedly at her.

"Vanellope," he said bluntly, his voice squashed funnily by the pressure on his cheeks. "She is _NOT, _my _girlfriend_."

Vanellope only quirked one corner of her smile and gently raised one eyebrow, leaning further back to look at him more clearly.

"Rrrrriiight. Whatever you say. Okay . . . . so she's _not_ your girlfriend. Officially. But she does _like _you."

He nodded in admittance, gently but forcefully peeling her tiny pink hands off his cheeks with two fingers and rolling his jaw.

"And you like _her, _right?"

"_Obviously," _he muttered.

"Well then, _cool guy . . . . _I guess it's pretty _obvious _what your next move is, then, huh?"

Ralph widened his eyes reflexively at her, then gulped down a sudden dryness thickening his throat.

"Well, we . . . . we _did _make another d . . . another . . . . _date, _for tomorrow night . . . ."

"Then there you go! It's perfect!" Vanellope grinned, holding her hands out and hopping backwards to sit on his knees again. "Ralph, you've got to march into that game tomorrow night and make it o_fficial. _Get this thing locked down, while the locking's _good!"_

Ralph cleared his throat awkwardly, eager to change the subject.

"Ah . . . s-speaking of _lockdowns . . ." _he stammered hastily, looking around at the crowd. " . . . it looks like something's finally happening."

It was. Vanellope dropped her coy smile and swiveled her head curiously at the surrounding cluster of game characters who had suddenly begun bustling and jostling each other, talking excitedly and leaning on each other's shoulders to try and see over the heads of their neighbors.

Ralph picked up Vanellope and deposited her on his shoulder as he heaved himself to his feet, rising up three feet over the general level of the crowd and looking easily in the direction they were all arguing and pointing toward. Vanellope rose to her feet on his shoulder and balanced herself with both hands on his head, peering eagerly forward.

In the center of the station, the surge protector program coordinator - looking even more stressed and disheveled than before - had climbed up on top of the main circular information kiosk and was signaling to the crowd for quiet, a PA tabletop microphone clutched in her right hand. Naturally, the more she tried to silence the mob, the louder and more volatile it became. Angry shouts of antagonism from different parts of the station rose randomly above the volume of the general unrest.

"We have a right to know what's going on!"

"You can't keep us in here!"

"This is imprisonment!"

"This is _illegal!"_

"I say we tip the kiosk!"

A mutinous roar followed the last cry of rebellion, and Ralph peered nervously in the direction of the shouting to see what looked like half the cast of Streetfighter pumping their fists riotously in unison. Somewhere, someone fired a machine gun into the air and half the room ducked.

"Baaaad idea locking this many hotheads in one room together for this long," Vanellope leaned over and whispered nervously in Ralph's ear. She dropped down to sit on his shoulders with her feet digging anxiously into either side of his neck and her hands gripping around his head, ducking to hide the lower half of her face behind his hair.

Ralph reached up and patted her reassuringly on the back. "Don't worry, kid. Everything's going to be fine."

She only clutched him tighter, and despite the firm confidence of his tone, Ralph couldn't help feeling a faint twinge of uncertainty himself. _This many ticked off, super-powered characters, all sealed in together with no way out, with all the exits barred . . . ? They would be __**lucky**__ if this night ended with nothing more than a tipped kiosk . . . _

As the riotous shouting grew continually rowdier, Ralph and Vanellope watched as the SP narrowed her frazzled brow into a dark, straight line and slowly raised the PA microphone over her head. Without so much as flinching, she reached up and abruptly twisted a knob on the side of the microphone as far in one direction as it would go, and immediately the atmosphere of the station was sliced by a high-pitched, earsplitting scream from the PA system, a deafening blare of electronic noise that made everyone in the room hunch down and cover their ears, whining in agony.

The SP held up the volume on the shrieking microphone feedback for ten seconds, until every last character had quieted down . . . then she abruptly turned the knob back down to normal, and there was a collective moan of both pain and relief. Ralph grimaced and twisted one finger in each ear, his head ringing like a gong. Vanellope's knees had squeezed around his neck so tightly she almost choked him.

"NOW THEN," the surge protector annunciated bluntly into the microphone, her voice magnified boomingly over the PA system. "If you would all be so kind as to conduct yourselves in a calm and orderly manner, we can all _get out of here _as soon as possible. As you all know, the arcade and the station are currently in _full lockdown _due to an incident that came to attention at approximately eight fifteen, pm, this evening . . . . for reasons yet unknown, our entire staff of Game Gate Surge Protection and Security . . . . that is, the entire staff apart from _myself . . . . _have become suddenly and inexplicably _incapacitated."_

The SP paused, and a hushed murmur circulated through the room. Vanellope's fingers curled tighter into Ralph's hair, and he winced slightly.

"'_Incapacitated?'" _she parroted dubiously. "What is _that _supposed to mean?"

"It means she doesn't want to tell us the _truth_," Ralph muttered in reply.

The murmuring grew louder, and the surge protector immediately raised the microphone over her head again with her hand hovering threateningly over the volume knob. The crowd immediately silenced.

"It is my obligation to inform you that as of now, the situation _has_ stabilized . . . . the entire staff has been quarantined in the security substation, and at this point their condition _is not threatening. _I must ask all of you to remain _calm _and follow these instructions in an _orderly fashion. _Game Central Station is, until further notice, officially _closed. _I will momentarily lift the firewalls on every game port, and you will conduct yourselves calmly and quietly to your respective games of residence."

There was a rippling hubbub of excited whispering, which quickly died down under the SP's broad, penetrating stare.

"AT WHICH POINT . . . " she continued sharply, trolling her gaze slowly around the room. "ALL game ports will once again be _returned_ to lockdown mode, and will REMAIN that way _indefinitely, _until the cause of this disturbance can be determined and dealt with. ALL CHARACTERS are to continue with gameplay as normal during the arcade's hours of operation, and after hours, _all traffic _between games is hereby PROHIBITED. All games will receive official notices of a return to normal GCS activity as soon as the lockdown is lifted. DISMISSED."

The program coordinator switched off the microphone with a sharp buzz of static, and for a few tense seconds the station was completely silent. Then, the air was filled with the loud, repetitive blaring of the portal alarms, and identical white lines of electricity fazed up from the floor of each gate simultaneously, the barriers all lifting at once.

The alarms silenced, and there was another moment of pregnant stillness . . . . then, in one bursting explosion of activity and volume, everyone in the station began pushing and jostling in a semi-panicked frenzy, all fighting desperately to get to their game gates. Ralph grunted and _oofed _as he was unceremoniously bumped and shoved from several directions at once. He swayed dangerously on his feet as he was almost knocked over by a veritable stampede of winged turtles, all rushing toward the Mario game port.

"_Ralph!" _Vanellope cried, tightening her hold on him as his shoulders swerved dangerously.

"I gotchya, I _gotchya!" _Ralph assured her, haphazardly grabbing her with one hand and tucking her under one arm before she fell into the writhing swarm of characters underfoot. Vanellope clung fearfully to his shirt, her eyes darting in every direction. Forcing himself to keep calm, Ralph anchored himself firmly on both feet and let the herd of foot traffic divide around him, straining his neck to peer at the titles of the game screens and holding Vanellope protectively to his side.

"_There!" _he growled, finally spotting the Sugar Rush terminal just a few gates down. Setting his jaw firmly in determination, Ralph lowered his shoulders and plowed through.

If he had bemoaned his size and weight earlier while trying to traverse the crowd in the station politely and without upsetting anyone, he was now triply grateful for it as he used his bulk to hammer through the swarming mass of bodies like a mobile battering ram, shouldering people aside like rag dolls while simultaneously being careful not to actually hurt them.

"Ralph, what are you _doing?" _Vanellope shouted frantically from under his arm.

"What do you _think, _kid!?" Ralph growled incredulously, elbowing aside two zombies and George, the giant ape from Rampage. "I'm . . . _urgghh . . . . _getting you back to _Sugar Rush!"_

"Ralph, NO!" she screamed abruptly, wriggling and fighting to get out of his grasp. "_NO, _I'm not getting locked in there away from you! I'm staying _with_ you!"

Ralph stumbled to a halt and looked down at her in shock, turning his eyes away from the melee just long enough to get hit in the nose with a caveman's club, made of a giant femur. He cringed, wincing at the blunt pain and shifting Vanellope firmly into his hands to hold her in front of his face and stare incredulously at her.

"You _what?" _he demanded. "Vanellope, have you _lost it!? _Didn't you hear what the SP said?"

"Yeah, and I also heard what she _didn't _say!" Vanellope shouted angrily, raising her voice to be heard over the roar of the mob even as she wrestled against Ralph's tightly clamped hands. "She's not telling us the whole story, Ralph, and I don't _like it! _This could be _bad. _We could be stuck in our games for a _long, long time_, and if something _really bad_ _is _going to go down, I'm NOT going to be apart from _you _when it does!"

Ralph opened his mouth to shout some sense at her when he was suddenly shoved from behind by someone large and heavy, and his grip around Vanellope was knocked just slightly loose. Seizing the opportunity, she instantly wriggled out of his grasp and jumped to the floor, tripping a bit on impact and then taking off like a bullet through the madly churning forest of legs and feet.

"NO! _VANELLOPE!" _Ralph roared, half furious and half-panicked . . . he pushed his way forward after her, but it was hopeless . . . she had disappeared instantly amidst the swarming mob.

Cursing violently through clenched teeth, Ralph barreled and shoved his way through the crowd even harder than before, scanning his eyes frantically back and forth for a glimpse of mint green.

Characters were flooding into their game gates by the dozens, the station slowly but surely beginning to empty and the frenzy of the chaos gradually calming. After another thirty seconds, Ralph could finally run as much as five steps without tripping over anyone or having to knock anyone out of the way . . . the instant there was a path clear on the floor, he turned and began making his way toward Fix-It Felix Jr., searching desperately for Vanellope.

_He had to get her to Sugar Rush . . . . he __**had **__to get her safely back inside her game before the gates closed again . . . ._

At that second, to his horror, the alarm began to blare through the station again, buzzing quickly and repeatedly like a clock counting down to zero. He was almost to Fix-it Felix Jr., with still no sign of Vanellope . . . there was a sharp, collective crackling noise, and all in unison the lines of white static appeared at the tops of the game portals . . .

His heart thudding in his ears, his teeth gritting in panic, Ralph drew up to the entrance to his own game, frantically scanning his eyes one last time around the area . . . . when suddenly, out of nowhere, he _saw her . . . . _he caught a single, fleeting glimpse of Vanellope's green hood and her tangled mess of dark hair, which was still loose and flying behind her, as she darted like a squirrel through a cluster of passing Goomba's and took off in an all-out sprint toward the Fix-It Felix gate. The alarm began to blare faster, and at the top of the portal the line of white static began to slowly pass down over the arch.

"Vanellope, _NO! GET OUT OF THERE!" _Ralph ordered furiously, charging after her as fast as he could. He skidded to a stumbling halt at the edge of his gate, glaring after the tiny streak of mint green as she ran into the Fix-It Felix anteroom. His pulse pounding in his ears, Ralph shot a desperate glance up at the slowly lowering barrier, drawing steadily down towards him from above . . . then back over his shoulder toward the Sugar Rush portal on the other side of the station, the white line of static already a third of the way down its arch. Letting out an infuriated snarl, he whirled back and sprinted under the descending firewall, running into the Fix-It Felix loading dock just as Vanellope was scrambling onto the train.

"LISTEN TO ME, VANELLOPE!" Ralph shouted, his voice booming menacingly off the cavernous walls as he leapt onto the platform, reached out and seized her in both hands, snatching her out of the train car. Vanellope shrieked and thrashed her arms and legs futilely under his grasp, crying out in a voice that was half livid and half choked with impending sobs.

"_No, _Ralph, _NO, _I'm NOT getting _shut away from you!" _she screamed.

"_Be quiet!" _Ralph ordered her, gripping her fiercely under one arm and pivoting on his feet, taking off for the portal as fast as his desperate, lumbering strides could possibly carry him. He ran and ran, his heart pounding and his eyes widening as he drew near to the gate again . . . .

_It was too late . . . the firewall was almost down, the static line was only a few feet from the floor, the rest of the barrier shimmering transparently above it, separating them from the station outside . . . ._

_. . . . it was too late._

"NO! _NO!"_

With an enraged, impotent roar, Ralph threw himself against the portal at top speed, with as much force as he could muster, rolling back his right shoulder and taking the full impact on his left, to protect Vanellope, who was still shouting incoherently and fighting savagely against grasp . . . .

BOOOOOMM.

Ralph hit the firewall like a speeding freight engine, slamming against it with a deafening impact just as the last inch of the wall lowered down to the floor. An enormous tremor rippled out from the place he had it, quaking and wavering the entire wall for a few seconds, but not even coming close to breaking it. The waves of static gradually dissipated, and the firewall was still and solid again . . . . invisible, but real, and absolutely impenetrable.

Ralph had been jolted back five feet from the impact, tumbling down onto his back and losing his hold on Vanellope. She flew out of his arms and slid across the floor, rolling to a stop and frantically scrambling to her feet, shaken but completely unhurt.

Breathing hard, his heart still thudding in his ears, Ralph shook himself once from the dizzying collision with the wall, then quickly clambered back to his feet, the room spinning wildly for a few seconds. As soon as his vision cleared, he ran haphazardly back to the wall, swaying once off balance and then pounding his fist repeatedly on the invisible barrier, roaring and growling.

_BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!_

"HEY!" he shouted angrily, his voice resonating past the firewall through the now entirely deserted station. "HEY! Somebody open the gate! _Open the gate! _This girl is in the _wrong game! OPEN THE GATE!"_

When the echo faded, nothing but silence answered him. Slowly, Ralph dragged his fist down the firewall, letting his arms fall down at his sides in defeat. No one was there. No one was going to answer him.

His chest heaving, he turned to look over his shoulder at Vanellope, who was standing ten feet behind him with a frightened, anxious look on her face, her eyes brimming with a stalemated shine of both shock and guilt. Ralph narrowed his eyes at her angrily for a moment, but couldn't bring himself to yell at her. Instead, he breathed out a long, exhausted exhale and hung his head wearily, running one hand over his face.

It didn't matter now . . . . there was nothing they could do. She was trapped in his game along with him.

A/N: That is definitely the most capital lettering of any chapter thus far. Reviews make me smile! :D


	20. Chapter 19: Quarantine

A/N: I love it when a story hits that point where it almost starts to take control of itself and move forward of its own volition, and I'm almost just as much along for the ride as you guys. This chapter definitely led me at least one place I didn't have planned at all . . . see if you can guess what it is ;)

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 19: Quarantine_

Ralph and Vanellope sat beside each other in painfully dead silence on the Fix-It Felix train as it rattled its way through the dim tunnel leading into the game. They pointedly avoided each other's gaze, Vanellope squeezed in on his left side with her hands between her knees and her face turned guiltily to the floor. Ralph stared forward with a resigned, exhausted glare, his brow fixed in a narrow scowl down over his eyes. He knew it was pointless to be angry, but at the same time he couldn't help it. Through the duration of the short train ride, he kept his mouth clamped purposefully shut for fear of what he might say if he allowed himself to talk. For a few stilted, agonizingly weighted minutes, the only sounds were the inappropriately cheerful clanking of the wheels and the swaying creak of the car couplings.

When the train finally clamored to a stop at the station, Ralph gripped the front handrail of their car and pried himself out with a dull grunt, climbing out onto the platform without a single word and lumbering across it without so much as glancing back at Vanellope. There was another brief moment of aching silence, and then, as he was crossing the tracks to head in the direction of East Niceland, he heard the train shift every so lightly as its smaller passenger slipped out and hurried to catch up with him.

" . . . Ralph?" her voice floated timidly up to his ears, and he shot her a begrudging glance from the corner of his eye as they walked side by side across the grass. "Ralph, I . . . . I didn't mean to - "

He came to an abrupt halt, sucking in a sharp breath through his nostrils and turning to bear down on her with a scathing look. All at once, his anger had hit the boiling point, and he couldn't keep quiet any longer. Vanellope stopped in her tracks beside him, flinching when he cut off her guilty appeals with a sharp, impatient bark.

"You KNOW WHAT, kid? Just _save it," _he snapped, his hands clenching into fists. "Because _I don't want to hear it right now!"_

His snarl echoed briefly in the empty atmosphere of the game, and Vanellope blinked in shock at the ferocity of his tone.

"But . . . . but I was _only _trying to - "

"What? _What _were you trying to do, Vanellope?" he demanded angrily, the volume of his voice steadily rising. "_One _more minute, and I could have had you home . . . I could have _known _you were safe . . . but _no, _you just _couldn't_ let _me_ take care of things for once! You _always DO this . . . . _why? Why can't you everjust LISTEN TO ME? Don't you understand? You're _trapped in here now! _WHY didn't you just go back to Sugar Rush like I _told you to?"_

A spark of retaliating anger flashed suddenly in Vanellope's eyes, mingling with the paralyzed look of hurt and disbelief.

"Why? _Why?" _she shouted back, her voice cracking slightly. "Because, _moron, _I _told you . . . _I would have just gotten trapped in _there, _too!"

Ralph growled in frustration and grit his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment and inwardly struggling not to lose control.

"SO? At least then you'd be . . . . _UURRGGH! _Vanellope, you _can't_ just . . . . you _abandoned your game!_ What's going to happen when the arcade opens, huh? Don't you GET IT? We could be locked in here for days . . . _weeks, _for all we know! What's going to happen to Sugar Rush when everybody finds out you've disappeared? Forget _getting out _of here, you'll be lucky if you even have a game to go back _to _when this is all over! How could you do that to the other racers, all your subjects? Don't you even _care? _What were you THINKING, _Vanellope!?"_

He was slightly out of breath as he ended his tirade, holding his hands out incredulously toward Vanellope and drilling her with a demanding glare, his chest heaving shallowly and the heat of his temper burning hotter and hotter with each passing second. The booming echo of his shouting dissipated slowly, and for a moment there was silence between them.

As Vanellope stared quietly back at Ralph's menacing glower, the spark of defiance gradually faded from her face. She let her shoulders drop down and her angry frown softened imperceptibly until there was nothing but disappointment and sadness in her expression. Ralph's scowl melted, his flare of anger evaporating instantly when he saw the unmistakable shine of tears suddenly welling up in her eyes.

"I was _thinking," _she uttered hoarsely, slowly, struggling visibly to keep from crying, " . . . . that if this whole thing _really_ is as bad as it seems . . . . then Sugar Rush can take care of itself for a while. I was _thinking, _that if something _happens . . . _something _bad . . . . _then the worst thing _wouldn't_ be for me to be locked out of Sugar Rush. The _worst thing_ . . . . " she began to choke up, the shine in her eyes growing brighter and her fists clenching at her sides. " . . . . would be not being able to _get to you."_

She stared at him for another few seconds, the look on her face taking all his anger and frustration of the previous moment and twisting it into a wrenching pang of guilt . . . then, the tears finally game, and she let out a furious, heartrending sob and took off, running away across the grass toward the East Niceland gate.

Ralph watched her go in stunned silence, the painful realization of what had really happened finally hitting him all at once.

_Vanellope hadn't gotten stuck with him in his game on purpose because she didn't understand the seriousness of the situation . . . . she'd done it because she __**did **__understand._ _She had realized, probably a lot sooner than he did, that there was a chance this lockdown might lead to much, __**much**__ worse things than everyone simply being trapped in their own games . . . . she had understood, and without even a second's hesitation, she had chosen __**him **__over Sugar Rush, over her own home and all her other friends and subjects in it. _

_If the worst were to happen, she had chosen to be with him . . . even at the expense of her own safety . . . when it did._

Deflating like a punctured balloon, Ralph slumped forward with an aching stab of self-disgust, the sound of his own insensitive ranting immediately replaying in his head and torturing him with regret. He lingered for another moment on the path, halfway between the train station and the brick arch with a sharp, guilty knot twisting up inside of him. Finally, he took a slow, steadying breath and set off trudging across the grass, mentally berating himself for his own bullheadedness with every step.

_Jerk, __**idiot **__. . . . angry or not, he didn't have to __**yell **__at her like that . . . why couldn't he ever just learn to control his stupid temper?_

As he drew nearer to the gate, the small sounds of Vanellope crying to herself became more and more audible, and every whimper she made was like another punch to his gut. By the time he had gotten there, he was practically on the verge of literally punching himself in the gut as penance, and it only got worse when she finally came into view.

Vanellope was sitting on the front stoop of his brick shack, hunched over with her face buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking every few seconds with little hiccups and sobs. Ralph's brow puckered in a remorseful frown and he breathed another painful sigh, bracing himself briefly for the moment of anguish before slowly crossing the yard and coming to a stop a few feet from his front door.

Vanellope heard him coming and looked up, her nose red and her eyes bleary. When she saw him, she narrowed her brow angrily and sniffed, wiping her face with her sleeve and turning to sit on the other edge of the stoop, facing away from him.

"Go a_way," _she ordered half-heartedly, hugging herself and staring down at the ground.

He took another small step forward.

"Vanellope . . . . "

"'Save it, _kid!_ I don't want to _hear it _right now, because I'm a smelly, fatheaded _jerk!'" _she snapped, tilting her head back and forth and mimicking him in an insulting, dopey voice.

Ralph sighed and nodded ashamedly, running one hand through his hair.

"I guess I deserve that," he muttered, taking another timid step closer. Vanellope turned away further to put her back to him. "Can I sit down?"

She shrugged petulantly without looking at him. "It's your _house_."

Ralph turned and sat down slowly, carefully settling his bulk on the far side of the stoop so as not to bump into her. He folded his hands over his knees and sat quietly for a moment, his eyes resting softly on the back of her head. After a short pause, he exhaled audibly and tried again.

"I'm sorry, Vanellope," he said plainly, in a calm, apologetic tone. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."

She kept her back turned coldly to him, crossing her arms tighter and deliberately staring down at the grass. Ralph slid a few inches closer to her.

"I only got mad because . . . . well . . . ." he hesitated briefly, scratching the back of his neck and fighting down the twinge of shyness he still felt whenever he had to talk seriously about his feelings. " . . . . because . . . . I was scared. Scared that you had put yourself in _danger_. I . . . I don't know what I'd do if anything ever happened to you."

Another second of silence passed . . . then, slowly, Vanellope shifted just slightly towards him and peered gradually over her shoulder to look at him from the very edge of her periphery. Her eyes were still red and her cheeks tearstained, her messy, loose hair falling down and covering half her face.

"I can take care of my_self_, you know. I'm big enough to make my own decisions."

Her tone was still vexed and defiant, but underneath it was a definite hint of touched warmth at his open concern for her. Ralph nodded understandingly.

"I know you are. You're a smart kid."

He nudged her shoulder every so gently with his knuckles, and after another short hesitation she begrudgingly slid around to the front of the stoop again, turning to pin him with a not-yet-wholly-satisfied stare.

"Smarter than _some _people, anyway," she grumbled pointedly, narrowing her eyes at him.

In spite of himself, Ralph couldn't help smiling and chuckling faintly at her expression. He carefully brushed her tangled bangs out of her forehead with one finger, and she didn't try to stop him.

"Right. Smarter than some people." He rolled his eyes and tapped himself suggestively three times on the head, and Vanellope couldn't help cracking a smile and letting out a small giggle. She smeared the heel of her hand over her eyes, wiping away the last traces of tears, and the two of them sat quietly for a brief moment, not looking directly at each other, but not looking away, either.

". . . . I'm sorry, too," Vanellope said presently, casting her eyes downward. "I guess you kind of had a right to be upset."

Ralph flattened his mouth into a thoughtful line at her sudden change in demeanor, then tapped her gently on the shoulder, making her look back up.

"C'mere," he said quietly with a small smile, holding his arm open. Vanellope smiled weakly back, then got up and climbed onto his lap, leaning against his stomach and letting him put one arm around her.

"It doesn't really matter much now, anyway," he admitted, and she turned her big eyes up to his face. "You're here, and there's nothing either of us can do about it . . . . so I guess we'll just have to make do."

Vanellope nodded. "It's not that I don't _care _about Sugar Rush, Ralph. I just know that they can get along perfectly well without me, even if the lockdown lasts all _week. _That's the beauty of being part of an ensemble cast . . . nobody notices if one character goes missing for a while, even if it's the _president_. And besides, I've got protocols in place for just this sort of thing . . . if I'm gone, Sour Bill is in charge of everything. I guess he's sort of like my unofficial Vice-President, come to think of it," she lowered her eyes and held her chin thoughtfully for a second. Ralph snorted lightly and rolled his eyes.

"I bet he just _loves _that," he muttered half-jokingly, shaking his head. "Candy-coated little control freak . . ."

"Anyway. It's like I said, Ralph. Sugar Rush can take care of itself for a while. I came here because I _wanted _to. It's _my _choice."

In contrast to her slightly indignant tone, Vanellope suddenly wrapped her arms around his side as she was talking, half-burying her face in the front of his overalls and muffling her last words. Surprised, but touched all the same, Ralph smiled down softly at her and held her close with his hand for a few seconds, running his thumb gently down the back of her long, dirty hair.

"Well, in that case, then . . . . I'm glad you're here, kid."

They sat together there on the stoop for another minute of warm silence . . . . then, breathing a small sigh, Ralph patted Vanellope on the back and set her down on her feet in the grass, then stood up and ran his hand wearily over his head, jerking his neck in the direction of the rest of the neighborhood.

"C'mon, stowaway. We better go make sure everyone else is still here."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

A few long minutes after Vanellope reached up on her tiptoes to ring the doorbell of Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It's brownstone apartment in the East Niceland main street, Felix hastily answered the door, looking somewhat frazzled and impatient. He was wearing a blue bathrobe monogrammed with the same "FF" as his cap, and his usually impeccably combed hair was tussled and messy. When he looked up and saw the two of them blinking at him on his front doorstep, his eyes bugged with surprise and he quickly straightened up, clearing his throat embarrassedly and fidgeting with the sleeves of his robe. His face flushed almost imperceptibly.

"_Oh . . . _R-Ralph, ah . . . ha ha, and Vanellope! Well, isn't this a, uh . . . _pleasant _surprise! Little _late _for visitors, but . . . ah . . . er, nevermind! What can I do you for?"

Ralph and Vanellope glanced briefly at each other and exchanged raised eyebrows, then looked back at the flustered superintendent.

"We just wanted to check in and make sure you were o_kay_," Ralph explained.

Felix stared at them blankly for a second, his eyes shifting from one to the other in a confused deadpan.

"Um . . . . . . thank you?"

Vanellope sighed and slumped her shoulders. "He has no idea what's going on, does he?"

Ralph shrugged sideways at her. "Well, I guess he _wouldn't _if he's been in here all night."

Felix frowned, looking more perplexed than ever. "What? What's going on that I don't know about?"

Ralph exhaled resignedly and eyed the narrow doorway leading into the Fix-It's front foyer, their replacement chandelier dangling vicariously at the end of it, right at his eye level.

"You better let us come in and tell you about it, buddy," he murmured, half reluctantly. "It's kind of important."

Felix's eyes bugged again, and the faint glow in his cheeks immediately brightened to a livid pink. He froze like a statue with his hand on the door-knob, and glanced back over his shoulder into the house, then blinked at them silently for a few seconds.

"Aaaahhh . . . . all . . . aaaaaal_right _then, if that's what you . . . er . . . . ah, st-step inside, then . . . won't you?"

Vanellope shot Ralph a strange, questioning look, then shrugged and walked in through the doorway as Felix stepped awkwardly aside. Grimacing uncomfortably, Ralph very carefully shifted sideways and ducked to squeeze in under the seven-foot door frame, making it necessary for Felix to flatten himself against the wall so that he could pass by. He followed Vanellope down the narrow hallway ( taking _particular_ care the lean around the crystal chandelier ) and into the living room, Felix closing the door shut behind them and hurrying to catch up. As soon as Ralph and Vanellope stepped into the combination living and dining room, both their jaws descended and they each scrunched one eye weirdly at scene in front of them.

At one end of the room, the long, mahogany dining table was set with what appeared to be the disheveled remains of an elegant dinner for two, strewn all over with used silverware, empty glasses and half-eaten plates of food. There was an overturned champagne-bucket spilling ice cubes onto the floor, and two tall, still-burning candlesticks had melted halfway down to their holders, trickling red wax onto the tablecloth.

One of the four dining chairs was overturned and lying on the floor, and one of the armchairs in the den area was out of place, as if someone had fallen into it and knocked it askew against the wall. A single sock, two pairs of shoes - one small, one large - a cloth napkin, and a trail of what Ralph realized after a second glance were rose petals, were scattered up the nearby staircase leading to the second floor of the apartment.

Felix hurried anxiously into the living and gave a short, nervous laugh, shrugging helplessly at their matching stares. Ralph noticed for the first time that Felix was walking around with one foot bare and the other in a sock.

"Sorry we, ah . . . . didn't have a chance to clean up a bit," he stammered, giving them an awkward grin that was more of a grimace. "If we'd have known you were _coming . . ."_

In spite of his rapidly rising level of discomfort as it became increasingly obvious just what kind of a night he and Vanellope were interrupting, the word _we _cut through to Ralph's brain and snapped him back to the dire reality of their situation, and he shook himself with a sudden flare of panic.

"'We'? _We?" _he repeated, groaning and shooting a frantic glance first at Vanellope, who returned it with equal apprehension, then at Felix, who only looked confused. "Oh, don't _tell me . . . . . _Felix, is . . . . . is Calhoun here _too?"_

Felix narrowed his brow unappreciatively at the tone of his voice, putting his hands on his hips as if in defense of an accusation.

"Yes, she _is, _as a matter of fact . . . . why shouldn't she be? It's the middle of the _night! . . . _And while we're asking questions, just what business do the two of you have knocking on our door at this hour, _anyway?"_

Ignoring his irritated inquiry, Vanellope ran both hands through her hair and cringed anxiously up at Ralph.

"This is going to get ugly, isn't it?" she muttered. Ralph cringed back at her and nodded.

"Yeah. It's going to get ugly."

"For the last _time, _what in heaven's name are you two _talking about?" _Felix demanded.

Ralph sighed heavily and turned to look his protagonist square in the face.

"Felix . . . . . you better bring your wife down here. There's something we need to tell you . . . . _both _of you."

Felix's faint look of disapproval lifted at the seriousness of his tone. He let his hands fall to his sides and made an anxious face, shaking his head at the floor.

"Well . . . o_kay, _but . . . . she is _not _going to like this."

Taking a deep, steadying breath, like a man preparing to charge headfirst into a combat situation, Felix set his jaw firmly and marched past Ralph and Vanellope, taking the stairs almost at a run and disappearing up to the second floor . . . which, due to the uncompromising narrowness and feared stress capacity of the staircase, Ralph had never seen. Vanellope hopped over to the banister to peer up after Felix until he had gone, then gave a small shudder and looked back at Ralph.

"This is bad," she said gravely.

"No . . . this is _really _bad," Ralph corrected, crossing the room and dropping down onto the sofa to put his head in his hands, ignoring the sharp, protesting creak of the springs under his weight. "What's going to happen to Hero's Duty when Calhoun isn't there in the morning?"

"Forget Hero's Duty! What's going to happen to _us _when we're the ones who have to _tell her?"_ Vanellope cried.

Abruptly, as if on cue, they heard a blunt, muffled _CRASH _sounding from upstairs, followed by raised voices and the heavy pounding of footsteps on the ceiling. Vanellope and Ralph exchanged frightened glances.

There was another loud _BANG - _the sound of a door being thrown open - then the unmistakable growl of Calhoun's voice and the deliberate stomp of her footsteps, followed by the smaller shuffle of Felix behind her. The top of the stairs creaked as they began to descend, and Vanellope let out a sharp yelp and darted across the room to scramble up onto the couch, hiding behind Ralph and peeking out over his shoulder.

Calhoun appeared on the stairs, a terrifying scowl twisting her features as she muttered gruff curses under her breath, her hands clenched tightly into fists as she marched down into the living room and planted herself firmly on the floor. She was also barefoot, and wearing a tightly cinched blue bathrobe that matched Felix's, except that instead of two F's, hers was monogrammed with the tiny sequence of letters "STJCF." Her short blonde hair was also wildly mussed, and she was tapping her foot slowly on the floor as she folded her arms in front of her, pinning the two of them with a glare that made Vanellope squeak shrilly and tighten her grip on Ralph's shoulder. Ralph tried to smile and gave Calhoun a small, weak wave, which she blatantly ignored.

"This had better be _good," _she growled darkly.

Ralph and Vanellope gulped simultaneously.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

After a few long minutes of explanation, the moment came when Ralph was finally forced to utter the crucial words out loud . . . and the instant he did, Calhoun's previously glazed, disinterested expression vanished, and her eyes shot wide open in a furious, incredulous stare.

"We're _WHAT!?" _she screamed, bolting up out of her chair and onto her feet, clenching her fists and seeming to tower over him, despite the fact that her head barely rose above his, even while he was sitting.

Ralph and Vanellope flinched in unison, leaning back on the couch away from the fuming sergeant as her chest began to heave. Ralph cleared his throat, slightly frightened, and nodded dismally.

"I'm afraid it's . . . t-true. Until they lift the lockdown, we're all st . . . . st . . . . _stuck in here_."

Felix was sitting across from them on one of the armchairs, his jaw hanging open and his shoulders slumped limply in shock. Calhoun let out a savage noise that was halfway between a snarl and a yell and kicked a footstool, sending it flying into the coffee table. She buried both hands in her hair and growled in reeling disbelief as she began pacing furiously back and forth around the room.

"This is outrageous! No, it's _worse, _it's _ludicrous! _WORSE! It's _IDIOTIC!" _she shrieked. "What gives them the right? Don't they realize what they've _done? _Don't they realize how many games, how many _LIVES, _they've jeopardized!?"

"Now . . . . Tamora, let's . . . let's try to stay calm, and _think _about this," Felix tried, still dazed and stammering with shock at the alarming news.

"_THINK _ABOUT IT? Think about _what, _Felix? About how Hero's Duty is going to be put out of order _first thing tomorrow_ and there's _nothing _I can do it about it . . . allbecause some IMBECILIC blue _bureaucrat _decided to just go and lock people up in their games without even TELLING THEM?"

Felix, Ralph and Vanellope all exchanged painful, helpless glances. In spite of anything they might say, any consolations or optimistic opinions they might try to come up with, each of them knew, without a doubt, that Calhoun was right. She wasn't just the commanding officer of her unit . . . she was the primary interface character of her entire _game, _the only one who had direct interaction with the players. Hero's Duty was _not _the same as Sugar Rush . . . . there would be absolutely no way to cover up the fact that Calhoun was missing from the gameplay. If she couldn't find a way to get back soon, Hero's Duty . . . . and the entire platoon of soldiers inside it . . . . was as good as unplugged already.

Felix rose anxiously to his feet, trying to stop Calhoun's frantic pacing and ease her back into her chair.

"_Listen _to me_, _Tammy, sweetheart . . . . okay, I _admit it._ Right now,things look . . . well, they look _bad_. But getting all worked up isn't going to do any of us any _good. _Please, honey . . . _try _to calm down."

Calhoun gradually slowed a stop, hanging her head to hide her eyes with her bangs and giving one last furious snarl of frustration before obediently dropping back down into the chair, where she hunched over and buried her face in her palm. Felix stood on his toes to put his arm comfortingly around her shoulders, rubbing her knee with the other hand.

"That's it," he said softly. "Don't worry, Tammy. We're going to figure out _something. _They can't keep us locked in here forever."

"They don't _need _to," Calhoun spat bitterly, sinking lower in the chair. "All it'll take is a couple days . . . . a couple days being out of order, and _bam . . ._ Litwak will pull the plug on Hero's Duty before you can say _cybug. _And my men are _locked into the game! _They won't be able to do a _single thing about it, _they won't even be able to _run!" _

Ralph and the others cast their eyes dismally down towards the floor, a harsh pall settling over the atmosphere of the room. None of them had a response to the grim truth of her statement.

"I wonder how many other poor souls are trapped outside of their own games, right now," Felix murmured absently, his voice somber and heavy with pity.

"_I _want to know just what it is that's so _wrong_ with the surge protectors that those idiots resorted to this," Vanellope muttered darkly.

Calhoun abruptly jerked her head up, her gaze dark and burning with anger.

"I'll _tell _you what it is, _princess," _she growled furiously. "It's exactly what that _idiot _program coordinator _didn't _want to tell you. It's the one word that she could _never, ever _say to that crowd, not if she wanted to get out of it with her _skin."_

The three of them looked up at her, afraid to hear, but already half-knowing what she was about to say. Calhoun lowered her brow darkly and stared off into space.

"It's a _virus," _she gritted the word out through her teeth, and the sound of it seemed to ripple through the room like a freezing chill. "This arcade isn't just in lockdown_. _We're in _quarantine."_

There was a brief moment of fearful, rigid silence in the room. Vanellope gave Ralph an anxious glance, and all he could do was frown uncertainly and put his hand around her shoulder.

"A virus . . . . _jaminy," _Felix muttered quietly. "But . . . I don't understand. What kind of _virus _infects surge protectors? They're not even part of any game."

"I don't know," Calhoun answered, suddenly standing up and hiding her face with her hair again, her hands balling into fists. "But so help me . . . I'm going to _find out."_

Without another word, she turned and stormed out of the room, marching up the stairs without looking back. Felix knit his brow concernedly after her.

"I think you two had better leave now," he said gently to Ralph and Vanellope. "This is all hitting her awfully hard."

Ralph nodded in dismayed agreement. "Yeah. We'll leave you two alone. Come on, kid." He rose creakily up off the sofa and gestured weakly for Vanellope to follow him to the door. Felix shuffled quietly behind them to let them out, and when they were both standing outside on the front stoop of the apartment again, there was a moment of heavy, weighted silence between them. Felix finally broke it with a small sigh and a commendable attempt at a brave smile.

"Well . . . thanks again for letting us know."

Ralph tried his best to smile encouragingly back. "Yeah . . . . I only wish we could have brought better news."

Felix nodded and put his hand on the doorknob, then glanced down at Vanellope and gave her a warm look, affectionately patting his hand once on the crown of her tangled hair.

"I'm glad _you're _safe, Madam President," he said softly, his smile strengthening a bit as he looked at her. " . . . and I'm glad you're _here. _You and Ralph take care of each other until this mess is straightened out, alright?"

Vanellope made a slight face when he patted her head, but melted gradually into a look of understanding and smiled back at him, nodding acquiescingly.

"Sure thing, Señor Superintendent," she joked half-heartedly.

Felix gave each of them a final, appreciative nod, then slowly shut the door, leaving them alone on the stoop in the still quiet of the night. They stood there watching the door contemplatively for a few seconds . . . . then Ralph heaved a weary sigh and turned around, lumbering slowly down the steps. Vanellope followed him, and the two of them walked gloomily side by side down the empty street with their heads hung low, headed back toward the dump. Neither of them spoke until they had made it back to Ralph's shack and shuffled inside. Closing the door behind them and not even bothering to turn on the hanging lamp above the table, Ralph trudged listlessly through the small room and dropped down onto the edge of his bed, leaning over and rubbing his eyes tiredly with his hand. Vanellope crept silently across the floor and joined him, climbing up to sit next to him on the mattress. For another moment, they were both quiet.

"Ralph," Vanellope half-whispered after a few minutes, her small voice feeling out uncertainly in the dark like a lost, groping hand. "You don't . . . . . you don't _really _think there's a . . . . a _virus _out there, do you? I mean . . . . not a virus that could get into the _games?"_

Ralph turned to peer bleakly at her through the soft dimness of the room, wishing he could think of something, _anything, _to say to encourage her, to ease the fear evident in her whispering voice . . . . but he couldn't.

"I don't know, kid," he answered truthfully, shaking his head. "I guess . . . . it might be possible."

Vanellope breathed a short, shaking exhale and inched slightly closer to him. He could feel her beginning to tremble the littlest bit.

Summoning as much confidence and comfort into his voice as possible, Ralph put one hand gently around her shoulders and ran the other over her forehead, pushing her messy hair back out of her eyes and making her look up at him.

"Listen to me, Vanellope. Everything is gonna be alright. No matter what's going on . . . I'm not going to let _anything_ happen to you, okay? Not _ever. _I promise."

He heard her sniff quickly, and her head nodded up and down beneath his hand.

"Do you believe me?"

She nodded again, and looked up at him, the faint light shining through the curtained windows from outside glinting dully in her wide, dewy eyes.

"Uh-huh," she muttered in reply, sniffing again and wiping her nose on her sleeve. "I believe you."

Ralph smiled. "Good. Let's just try and get some sleep, then . . . . okay?"

Vanellope nodded silently and kicked off her boots, turning and crawling to the far side of the bed. Ralph lifted his feet up and laid down, settling himself wearily on the pillow and struggling to push all of the troubling thoughts from his mind. This time, Vanellope didn't wait half a moment after he had laid down to crawl into his arms, and he didn't hesitate to hug her close against his side, the glow of warmth emanating from her small body gradually helping to relax him from the lingering stress and fear of the turbulent night.

Then, just as he was on the verge of finally drifting into a shallow, restless sleep . . . . a single thought - one which, in all honesty, hadn't yet crossed his mind since the whole mess began, not even once - dropped abruptly into his head, breaking the tranquility of his semi-consciousness like a stone being dropped into a still pond, sending out ripples of sudden anxiety and fleeting near-panic that made his eyes shoot open and stare blankly, helplessly up at the dark ceiling above him.

For the first time, the thought occurred to him . . . . with a biting sting of dismal obviousness . . . . that Mike was, at that moment, locked up in Masterwork, all alone, completely oblivious to what was happening outside her game . . . . . and that she would be there, waiting for him tomorrow night . . . . waiting for someone who wasn't going to come.

A/N; There you have it . . . reviews make me smile!


	21. Chapter 20: The Tunnel On the Left

A/N: . . . . . _wow. _I sat down and this chapter just came pouring out of me like a nosebleed. _Unlike _a nosebleed, however, I never wanted it to end.

Enjoy, friends!

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 20: The Tunnel on the Left_

In accordance with the steady pattern that had been developing over the past week, there was already a small crowd of kids waiting outside the arcade as Litwak unlocked the doors at nine o'clock on Friday morning. He flipped the _Closed_ sign to _Open _as they rushed past him, then turned to watch them, smiling and shaking his head as they eagerly scurried inside and gravitated like homing darts straight to their favorite games.

Two twelve-year-old boys immediately raced each other to the far end of the arcade near the basketball free-throw shooters and pounced on Hero's Duty, snickering excitedly at each other as they slipped in their quarters. The blaring, familiar start-up music blasted out of the speakers, and the boys quickly pulled their large, plastic controllers out of the holsters, high-fiving each other once and then hunching their shoulders down over the guns in anticipation.

_"On a planet with no name, a top secret experiment has gone horribly wrong . . . . "_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_"QUARTER ALERT. QUARTER ALERT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."_

Inside the airlock at the end of the fortified military bunker, halfway between the exit shuttle and the steel door separating them from the surface of the planet, the Hero's Duty soldiers were all lined up together with their weapons ready, standing in formation as they always did in preparation for a game . . . all of them except for one. Kohut was at the back of the hall, darting his gaze desperately up and down the shuttle tracks leading out of the game, holding his breath and hoping against hope that at any second he might hear the lurch of the train approaching, or the sound of heavy footsteps coming down from the barracks.

Instead of psyching themselves up in communal silence as they normally did, the other soldiers were whispering nervously to each other and shooting frantic, repeated glances back to the entryway.

_"Kohut!" _Davisson peered back over his shoulder and flipped up the visor of his helmet, hissing sharply through his teeth. "Anything yet?"

"Negative," Kohut hissed back. "It's no use, she's _not _gonna make it in time!"

A panicked murmur rippled through the ranks, and a couple soldiers let out startled cries of anguish. O'Brien crossed himself and began muttering fearful supplications under his breath.

"She didn't come back, guys. The . . . the Sarge . . . she _didn't come back! SHE DIDN'T COME BACK!_ _What do we DO!?" _Markowski demanded of no one in particular, his voice shrill with panic.

Kohut shot one last hopeless glance down the tracks, then growled savagely and hurried back to rejoin the ranks. The other soldiers all began talking hysterically at once.

"This is _bad. _This is _really bad."_

"We're gonna get _toasted!"_

"No, we're _gonna _get our _plug pulled!"_

"Where IS SHE? Didn't anyone see her this morning?"

"Everybody just SHUT UP!" Kohut ordered, lifting his gun and cocking it loudly. "The cut scene's almost over! We have to _keep it together, _men!"

"HOW!?" Markowski practically shrieked. "How are we supposed to - "

"Hey, _shut it, _you idiots!"Ramirez snapped sharply from the back of the room, stepping aside and gesturing pointedly with the tip of his rifle. "The _shooters are coming through!"_

The platoon silenced and split automatically down the middle to make way for the first-person shooter-bot, this time armed with one weapon in each mechanical hand to accommodate the two-player mode, the twin faces of the gamers smiling excitedly from behind the screen - but when the robot made it to the front of the room to face the airlock door, there was no one there.

A horrible few seconds of gaping silence resonated in the room. The soldiers shot each other helpless, frantic looks and gestured mutely behind the robot's back.

_"What do we do?" _Friedman leaned over to Kohut and hissed fiercely, too quietly for the players to hear. "The door won't open without Calhoun's _trigger line!"_

There was another second of panicked quiet, and through the first-person screen they heard one of the players speak up in a confused, irritated tone.

"Hey . . . . why isn't it starting? Where's the chick?"

From the back of the ranks, Ramirez suddenly cleared his throat and flipped up his face shield, projecting his voice over the others' heads in a high, cracking falsetto.

"We . . . ah . . . _unh, _a_hem . . . _w-we are HUMANITY'S _LAST _hope!" he croaked unconvincingly. Davisson elbowed him sharply in the arm.

"Moron! You don't sound anything _like her!"_

"I don't see _you _coming up with anything!" Ramirez snarled back. "Ahh . . . y-you . . . YOU GOT WHAT IT TAKES, rookie? Let's _FIND OUT!"_

He annunciated the last phrase as clearly as possible in his best Calhoun-imitation, hoping against hope that it might trick the voice recognition mechanism and open the door . . . . for an agonizingly long moment, he and the rest of the platoon held their breath, their hands tightening desperately on the handles of their weapons.

"C'mon . . . c'_mon . . . " _Kohut pleaded under his breath.

Another few seconds passed . . . . and nothing happened. The airlock door remained sealed indifferently shut.

There was a groan of frustration from behind the player screen, and one of the boys angrily slammed his shooter back in the console holster.

"It's not gonna go, the stupid thing's _busted. _Mr. LIT_waaak . . . "_

The boy's voice trailed off as he walked away from the game, and everything fell deathly silent again. Kohut and O'Brien caught each other's eye and exchanged helpless, frightened glances. O'Brien shook his head slowly back and forth and dropped down to one knee, muttering to himself again as the other soldiers struggled to keep from panicking out loud.

_"Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus . . . "_

Kohut clenched his teeth and looked back down the empty hallway towards the shuttle loading dock.

"Come _on, Sarge," _he whispered, his eyes searching desperately. "Where _are _you?"

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Her face wrought like iron into the same fierce, permanent glare of impotent fury that she'd been wearing all day, Calhoun released the empty magazine out of her handgun, letting it fall onto the grass next to a small heap of others like it, and bluntly slammed in a new one with the butt of her hand, wrenching her arm straight up over her head and pointing the barrel skyward.

"PULL!" she snarled.

Sitting a dozen yards away on top of his stump, hunched over and gazing off into space with a bleak, miserable stare, Ralph breathed an absent sigh and felt around with one hand until his fingers closed around a random brick for what seemed like the hundredth time that evening. Without looking up, he wound his arm back behind his head and pitched it straight up into the air, sending it flying effortlessly into the sky like a pop-fly baseball.

Calhoun followed the airborne path of the brick with the nose of her gun for three seconds, waiting until it had reached the furthest point of its ascension and shrunk to the smallest possible target, then coldly pulled the trigger.

_BLAM!_

The harsh report of the gunshot echoed through the game for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time the brick shattered into fragments and rained down over the main street rooftops in a quick shower of rust-colored hail.

Felix and Vanellope, who were sitting side by side in the grass at the foot of the rubble pile near Ralph's stump, watched the tiny explosion of the brick with distracted, worried expressions. The arcade had only been closed about three hours, but it felt as if whole days had passed since their first quarter alert that morning.

It had taken an entire night of persuading and pleading, but Felix had finally managed to talk Calhoun into laying low for the duration of the workday. As he explained to Vanellope and Ralph while they were waiting for the arcade to open, he had reasoned with her that there was no point in trying to do anything during the day . . . it would only worsen their situation exponentially if, by trying to force her way through the firewall, she were to cause any damage to Fix-It Felix Jr. ( or to the station, for that matter ) that would draw Litwak's attention. As painful as it was that she presently wasn't able to do anything help her men, their first priority had to be making it through the day without getting put out of order or unplugged _themselves. _

Finally, Calhoun had agreed - begrudgingly - to stay in their apartment all day ( doing _what, _Ralph was afraid to ask ), and Vanellope had alternated bumming around inside Ralph's shack and sitting up on top of its roof to watch him destroy the apartment building. Throughout the day, he had a couple of opportunities between games to slip out of view of the screen and check up on her.

"How you holdin' up, Madam President?" he had asked glumly on his first available break sometime around noon, shuffling furtively over to his house and looking up at the melancholy little girl perched on the peak of his roof with her legs dangling over the eaves.

_"Bored," _she had replied simply, narrowing her eyes off into the distance with a glazed look and sighing heavily. "What I wouldn't _give _for just _one _good lap around the Licorice-Lava Pits right now . . . "

Ralph shrugged helplessly up at her. "Well, it _was _your choice to get locked in here," he reminded her bluntly. "You know, if you want something to _do,_ you could probably sneak into one of the apartments in back of the building for a while. I hear Lucy's place has a mean rec room."

Vanellope sighed again and shook her head.

"Thanks, but no thanks. I don't think I'm in the mood to try and have fun right now, anyway."

Ralph frowned sympathetically. "You worried about Sugar Rush?"

"No . . . . . I'm worried about _her," _Vanellope inclined her head in the direction of the Fix-It's apartment, and Ralph lowered his eyes to the ground, nodding sadly in agreement.

"Yeah. Me too," he muttered.

As truly concerned as he was for Calhoun and her men, however . . . . Ralph was too ashamed to tell Vanellope what was really plaguing him at the forefront of his mind that day. He was almost too ashamed to admit it to himself . . . . what really upset him the _most, _what made it nearly impossible for him to concentrate on work . . . . was the thought of not being able to meet Mike in Masterwork that night.

He knew he was being selfish. He tried repeatedly to force himself to take a realistic perspective on things . . . he reminded himself constantly throughout the day that it was _Calhoun _and the Hero's Duty soldiers who were _really _suffering, that he and Mike were both fortunate enough to have at least been stranded in their _own _games, with their full regiment of characters_, _without any imminent danger of being put out-of-order . . . he could be happy at least knowing she was _safe . . . ._

_Or . . . at least . . . . safe, for now, _a fearful, nagging voice continually wheedled at him_. There was no telling what might happen if the lockdown wasn't rescinded soon . . . or worse, if there actually __**was **__some kind of virus loose in the arcade . . . . . and Mike, poor Mike, with no one there to explain any of it to her . . . ._

It was no use . . . no matter how he tried, Ralph couldn't get rid of the hollow, gnawing pit of worry that twisted up inside him every time he thought about her locked away, alone, without the slightest idea what was going on. The thought of her waiting for him, not knowing why he wasn't there . . . . not knowing how badly it was tearing him up, not being _able_to be there . . . it was almost enough to make him blatantly ignore Felix's arguments of reason and run straight off to take another crack at the firewall him_self._

By the time the arcade finally closed at seven, everyone in the game . . . . he and Vanellope, Calhoun, Felix, and the Nicelanders - to whom Felix had tried to gently break the news of the lockdown in time to calm them back down before they opened that morning . . . . was a nervous wreck. The minute Litwak locked the arcade doors behind him, they had all convened in front of the apartment building to discuss what was to be done . . . . but between Calhoun's rapidly fraying grip on her own self-control and the speedy devolution of the Nicelander's input into senseless, terrified anarchy, it wasn't ten minutes before they'd given up brainstorming any coherent ideas at all. The Nicelanders barricaded themselves in the building, Ralph and the others had collapsed wearily in the grass at the edge of the dump, and Calhoun had piled up her armor and all her weapons at the train-station, ready to be donned at an instant's notice . . . . save for one handgun, which she had been using cathartically for target practice for the past several hours. And that was where they still were now, each privately struggling to think of a possible solution to their seemingly inapproachable problem . . . and each of them unable to come with anything at all.

Calhoun cocked her gun and thrust it upward again, her movements becoming frenzied and more erratic with every shot fired.

"_PULL!" _she roared again, her voice cracking slightly this time. Ralph begrudgingly moved to pick up another brick, but then he caught Felix gesturing to him negatively in the corner of his eye, shaking his head for him to stop.

"Um . . . T, Tammy?" his overwrought, bedraggled-looking protagonist tried gently, rising to his feet and gingerly approaching his wife. "Maybe that's enough for a while."

Calhoun openly ignored him. "I said _PULL, WRECK-IT!" _

She shot Ralph a burning glare so frightening that it startled him into obedience, and he quickly seized another brick and threw it, his arm shaking slightly and throwing off the trajectory. The brick sailed too closely over Calhoun's head, and her eyes widened briefly in surprise, then narrowed furiously as she let out a ragged growl and fired the gun three times in rapid succession, shooting repeatedly after the low-flying projectile and missing each time.

_BLAM, BLAM, BLAM!_

Felix flinched at the nearby crack of the reports, and a few yards away Vanellope covered her ears with her hands.

"Take it _easy _with that, wouldjya?" she snapped, wincing as the echoes faded.

The brick flew another thirty feet and bounced to a stop in the grass. With her chest heaving and her breath growing audibly ragged, Calhoun clenched her teeth and stormed after it.

"Tamora, _wait!" _Felix ordered firmly, holding out his hands to stop her . . . but she ignored him and marched wordlessly across the grass. She cocked her gun, pointed it straight down between her feet, and fired round after round directly into the brick, shooting repeatedly at the ground and tearing up the sod for a full five seconds after the brick had long since been obliterated.

_BLAM, BLAM, BLAM, BLAM,, BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM!_

Finally, the trigger gave a small, hollow _snick, snick, _as she tried to fire twice more with an exhausted magazine. With a low, gritted snarl of helpless rage, Calhoun reared one arm back and threw the empty handgun as hard as she could. It sailed high over the dump and disappeared somewhere against the starry blackness where the horizon of the game dissolved into the sky.

"That's _it!" _she declared finitely, turning and marching with bold, deliberate strides back toward the East Niceland gate. Felix stepped in front of her to try and stop her as she passed him by.

"_Calm down, _Tamora!" he said sharply. "You can't just go charging off when you're . . . "

"Out of my way!" she cut him off bluntly, stepping around him and breaking into a run. Startled at her sudden move, Ralph and Vanellope jumped up and took off after her alongside Felix, shouting pleading consternations at her back as she rapidly outstripped them and reached the train station leagues ahead of them.

"Calhoun, WAIT!" Ralph gasped. "What are you _doing?"_

The three of them breathlessly caught up to her at the station platform just as she was shouldering an enormous plasma cannon up over one arm and tossing her cruiser into the air with the other. The hover-board snapped out, expanding obediently as she leapt onto it, the added weight of the cannon making her dip down a few feet before rising back up and stabilizing four feet above the blue train, which was still docked at the station.

"I've had all I can stand!" Calhoun barked at them as they jumped up onto the platform and pinned her with matching incredulous stares. "I'm not going to spend one more _minute _sitting around waiting for my game to be unplugged! I'm either going to _take out that firewall, _or I'm going to _FRY trying!"_

Felix's jaw dropped in horror.

"Tamora, NO! You _can't! _Please, there has to be another way!"

Calhoun paused, her gaze meeting his and softening, ever so slightly, for just a split second . . . then, she steeled her brow again into a dark, unyielding glare and pursed her lips in absolute determination.

"I'm sorry, Felix. There isn't."

Without another word, she jammed her heel down on the ignition pad and the jets of the cruiser exploded to life in a burst of flame. Felix made a last ditch effort to hop onto the flyer just as it blasted away, but he missed it by inches and dropped into the middle car of the train instead, immediately bouncing back up and watching helplessly as Calhoun and her gigantic gun rocketed into the opening of the tunnel and vanished.

Felix whirled around to look at Ralph and Vanellope, his eyes wide with frantic desperation.

"We've got to stop her!" he cried.

Ralph didn't stop to think. His brain punched into emergency autopilot and his muscles seemed to go taut and jolt into action entirely of their own accord. Without hesitating an instant, he scooped up Vanellope with one hand, jumped down onto the ground in front of the train and quickly deposited her in the first car. She shook herself with surprise and looked up at him, gaping with confusion.

_"Ralph, _what are you doing!?" she exclaimed.

"Both of you, _hold on tight!" _he commanded bluntly. An abrupt flash of understanding blinked across their faces in unison, and their eyes widened with apprehension as they both ducked down in their seats and gripped the safety bars for dear life.

"Here we _goooOOO!" _Ralph shouted, his voice rising and breaking into a tremendous roar of effort as he planted both hands on the front car and pushed off with his feet as hard as he could, lurching the short train backwards along the tracks and gradually picking up speed until his legs could barely keep up with the rapidly hurtling cars. Felix and Vanellope's fearful yells mingled together into one high-pitched note echoing off the walls of the tunnel as they barreled backwards into the darkness, shooting down curves and bends in the tracks at a velocity tenfold the intended speed of the train. The couplings whined sharply with the unaccustomed strain, and the little cars rattled and shook as if they might begin breaking apart at the seams any second. Ralph hunched further down beneath his shoulders and clenched his teeth, digging his fingers into the front car so tightly the metal gave way and crinkled slightly with a sharp _crrreee-lank! _as his feet pedaled wildly along the train tracks so swiftly they were almost a blur.

_"Ralph . . . " _Felix said warily, struggling to turn and look over his shoulder as the circle of light appeared at the end of the tunnel and raced rapidly toward them. "Ralph, SLOW DOWN!"

Ralph glanced up, saw the light of the exit arch speeding towards them, growing larger and larger, and he let out a sharp yell, jumping both feet into the air for a split second so that he could lean back and bring his heels crashing down against the tracks. His feet dug into the ground like anchors thrown out of the window of a racecar; he cringed sharply and squeezed his eyes shut as the wooden sleepers began cracking in half under his heels, filling the remaining stretch of the tunnel with deafening, splintering explosions until the train and its three passengers finally shot out into the bright light of the loading station.

Still hurtling at near break-neck speed, the third car collided with the cross-beam stopping block, crashing loudly and denting the metal siding. A powerful jolt rippled all the way through to the front car as Vanellope and Felix were both slammed back in their seats, wincing as their necks whip-lashed painfully backward at the same time . . . but Ralph, who had been skidding nearly bolt upright and just barely clinging to the front car as he tried to slow it down, was launched forward like a rag doll at the thundering impact and sailed clean over their heads, somersaulting through the air and landing with a sharp _CRRICK! _on his back, then rolling head over feet twice more and finally sliding to a stop on the smooth linoleum floor of the Fix-It Felix Jr. anteroom.

The world was spinning violently, and the bottoms of his feet felt as if they were on fire, but Ralph had no time to think about it before Felix and Vanellope were sprinting past him, both shouting out desperate pleas, their voices echoing off the chamber walls as they raced toward the plug gate.

Ignoring the stars behind his eyes, Ralph forced himself quickly onto his feet and lumbered forward with his arms outstretched for balance. He followed his friends' voices and opened his eyes when his hand finally found the wall. Breathing hard and blinking dizzily, he looked up just in time to see Calhoun crouching down on one knee at the end of the short portal passage, the plasma cannon mounted over her shoulder and pointed straight toward the gate where the invisible firewall sat humming unsuspectingly.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

A soft breeze rustled the loose pages of her drawing pad, and Mike glanced up absently, the tip of her pencil pausing over the surface of the paper.

A few pink, wafting clouds had drifted in from over the mountains, heading slowly towards the sunset and bringing erratic whispers of a cool Eastern wind with them. When she had first come outside to wait . . . . _how long ago was it, now? an hour? two hours? less? . . . . _the edges of the sky had still been blue, the sun cheerfully bright and just beginning its twilight descent. Now, it hung low over the horizon like a fat orange suspended from a string, marking the crawling passage of the hours with every slowly sinking inch.

Mike looked back down at the rough outlines of her drawing and drew in a slow, deep breath, letting it out in a forlorn sigh. After sitting on the edge of the beach for the first solid hour of waiting - with her heart pounding like a drum, unable to resist darting her eyes back to check the left tunnel every few minutes - she had finally decided to try and do something to take her mind off of her almost unbearably mounting excitement while she waited.

To pass the time until Ralph arrived, she had dragged one of the dining chairs and a large sketchpad out into the middle of her lawn, pointing herself toward the mountains and sitting down to try and block out a landscape. She had only managed to put down a few charcoal lines before the drawing quickly transformed into something else, however . . . and so she had given up trying to distract herself from the object of her elation and given into it instead, churning out no less than five sketches in the next hour and a half. And, for a short spell, it had sort of worked . . . . she had managed to stop looking up at the tunnel every few minutes, and the drawing helped to calm the restless, impatient palpitations of her heart . . . at least, a _little._

But now, as she looked up from the beginnings of her sixth drawing, she suddenly realized how much time had elapsed since she sat down . . . . how long it was past the time that Ralph was supposed to have been there . . . . and all at once, the reality of what had happened hit her like a punch in the stomach. The full implications began to sink in like physical weights pulling her down into a deep pit, and her excited heartbeats turned to throbs of pain.

Slowly, she let the drawing pad fall off of her lap and onto the grass. She stood up and gazed out over the mountains, a sudden cold stillness settling over her limbs.

_He hadn't come._

_Ralph hadn't come to see her. _

She could feel it, like an ache deep inside of her . . . . this wasn't the same as when he'd been late before. This time, it was different . . . and the difference didn't lie only in the steep ratio of minutes that he was overdue tonight, compared with last night.

No . . . he wasn't just late.

He wasn't even on his way.

The evening had passed, and he hadn't come.

_He wasn't **going** to come._

Mike mouthed the words to herself as she stared off at the slowly darkening mountains, her eyes narrowing in thought as she tested the effect of the sentence on her own feelings.

"Ralph . . . isn't coming," she whispered aloud - then paused and looked inward, studying her own reaction.

The first thing she felt was a devastating hurt, like some inner part of her body had suddenly vanished and left a vacant hole . . . . and the second thing was a recoil, a stiff bouncing-back, as if the same body part abruptly reappeared and began functioning again at only half capacity. The pain didn't persist, but it left her with a numbness, an emotional aftertaste that she quickly realized she was experiencing for the first time in her life.

_"Disappointment,"_ she whispered out loud, and as soon as she said it, her brain finished processing the nuances of the word. She was shocked to discover. . . contrary to what she might have imagined if she had known beforehand that it was going to happen . . . that Ralph's absence did not immediately leave her feeling emotionally shattered. She didn't feel devastated, or angry . . . or even upset with him, for that matter . . . . what she did feel, even though it was dull and muted in comparison, was somehow worse. All at once, she felt as if she had ascended to a new plateau of comprehensional maturity that opened up a world of possibilities far more dreadful than those of her previous childlike simplicity.

She turned and looked at the empty arch of the tunnel on the left, and narrowed her eyes at it critically and reasoned aloud to herself.

"He didn't come . . . either, because he . . . he decided he didn't _want to . . . . " _she paused, swallowing down the sudden fearful chasm that that first possibility presented to her; " . . . . _or . . . . _he didn't come . . . . . because . . . . . something's _wrong."_

She stopped. As soon as she said the last words aloud, something inside her opened up and a well of fear came flooding out, because she somehow knew . . . . . without even having to think twice about it, without the slightest shred of doubt . . . . that the latter and worse of the two possibilities was indeed the one that was true. As she looked at the tunnel, her memory darted quickly back to a singular moment from the night before, and in her mind's eye she saw Ralph again, standing there with his back to the dark opening, almost looking as if he were hiding shyly behind his own face as he called out to her . . . .

_" . . . I . . . I like you, too."_

Mike opened her eyes, without realizing she had closed them.

_No. Ralph wasn't a liar._

_He wouldn't have said that to her if he didn't mean it. _

_If he said he was going to come, then he had meant to come . . . . and, if he wasn't there now . . . ._

_. . . . it was because something was wrong._

_Something had happened to him._

Mike's eyes widened and her fingers loosened around the charcoal pencil, letting it drop down into the grass by her foot as her chest was suddenly gripped with the sharpest, most wrenching vice of fear she had ever felt . . . . because all at once, she knew what she had to do . . . . what she was _going_ to do, even though everything inside of her was screaming hysterically at her not to do it.

She was going to leave Masterwork.

_She was going to go into the tunnel on the left._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The edge of the sun had just slipped beneath the glowing line of the ocean behind her. The wind from the East was picking up, and it gently flapped the hem and sleeves of her smock and made her hair dance back and forth across her eyes as she stood there like a statue, staring determinedly straight ahead without blinking.

It had taken her ten minutes to walk the dozen yards of grass standing between her and the twin tunnels . . . and when she finally got there, it had taken her another two to work up the courage to look up and open her eyes. When she did, and the immediacy of the yawning black opening loomed there silently, just inches in front of her . . . closer to the darkness than she had ever been . . . it had frozen her in place like a terrified ice sculpture, and for another full minute she couldn't even move.

Mike stood there, regarding the tunnel on the left, refusing to look away even when she felt as if her heart might give out with fear, it was beating so fast and so violently . . . but she didn't allow herself to back away. Her feet remained planted like roots in the dust of the footpath.

_"Mike . . . . " Ralph had asked her the night before, his voice quiet and gentle, " . . . . why are you so afraid of those tunnels?"_

_"I just . . . I can't explain it," she had answered. "Every time I look at them, I get this . . . this horrible feeling inside, like there's something awful waiting in them . . . but I don't know what."_

Mike took a deep breath in through her nose and exhaled it between her lips, reaching into the neck of her smock with trembling hands and drawing out her Battle-strokes brush.

_"You must think I'm being pretty ridiculous, huh?"_

_"No," he had answered her back. "I don't think you're ridiculous. I just think you're dealing with something most people never have to deal with. And I think, that if you let me . . . . I could help you beat it."_

Mike tightened her grip on the brush handle and held it out readily in front of her, every muscle tensed and every nerve quivering. Ignoring the rising panic that fought continually to seize control of her and make her run straight back into her house and lock herself inside it forever, Mike took a final breath to steady herself, and tightened her free hand into a fist, closing her eyes for a final few seconds.

_"It's okay," he had said to her kindly, waiting patiently to help her take her first step outside. "I'm right here behind you."_

_"Right here behind me," _she whispered to herself.

Mike opened her eyes, set her face into a firm, uncompromising stare, held her breath . . . and walked into the tunnel.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Tamora, _DON'T__!" _Felix shouted desperately, skidding to a stop a few feet behind his wife as the sound of the plasma cannon slowly calibrating up to charge grew louder and louder, buzzing and crackling excitedly almost as if it were alive. Vanellope slid to a halt beside him, followed a few seconds later by a still discombobulated Ralph.

"Have you gone _nuts?" _Vanellope cried shrilly. "If that thing _backfires, _you're gonna be toasted like a marshmallow!"

"And so will _you _clowns, if you don't _get back!" _Calhoun retorted sharply, and from the tone of her voice Ralph realized immediately that it was pointless to argue with her . . . she had her mind made up, and nothing they could say would persuade her now. Unless he wanted to try and physically wrestle that gun away from her, there was nothing they could do to stop her. Narrowing his eyes first at Calhoun, then down at Felix and Vanellope, who were still pleading hopelessly with her not to fire the cannon, two conflicting sides warred violently within him for one harrowing instant . . . and then, he looked back up at the cold, blank stare of Calhoun's eyes, and it became unquestionably clear what he had to do.

Setting his brow in a reluctant, but determined line, clamping his mouth shut and fighting down the lingering sways of dizziness in his head . . . . without a word, Ralph reached out and snatched up both Felix and Vanellope from behind, gripping one hand firmly around each of them and picking them up off the floor with twin yelps of shock. Ignoring their incredulous stammers, he tucked one of them protectively under each arm and retreated back into the Fix-It Felix anteroom, ducking down and turning his back to the gate. His face set in a combination of anger and a sudden, powerful sense of respect for Calhoun's absolute . . . if _insane _. . . . dedication to her men, he peered over his shoulder and shot a final, penetrating look at her just as the plasma cannon finished charging, buzzing out a small warning alarm.

"You _better _know what you're doing, Captain _Crazy!_" he shouted threateningly.

In spite of herself . . . in spite of the gravity of the moment . . . . Calhoun looked back at him and hooked one corner of her mouth in a brief, grateful smile.

Vanellope had given up and scrunched herself into a ball under Ralph's arm, covering her head with her hands and burying her face protectively in his side . . . but Felix began thrashing and struggling so violently, Ralph was almost afraid to hold him down with any more force, lest he actually hurt himself trying to get free.

"NO! _NO! Tamora Jean Calhoun Fix-It, _I ORDER you to _put that thing DOWN!"_

The iron-clad resolve in Calhoun's gaze flickered, almost imperceptibly, for one last instant . . . then, darkening into an adamant scowl of finality, she shook her head and turned back to face the firewall, raising the cannon and taking aim.

"I'm sorry, Felix," she said plainly. "But I don't have a choice. It's going to be alright. Just _stay low, _and be prepared to get your _butt_ over here with that hammer if anything goes wrong."

Ralph watched over his shoulder, adrenaline pumping and his heart hammering in his ears, as Calhoun switched off the safety and the cannon gave a loud, vibrating hum of response. She settled her fingers over the massive trigger and sucked a deep breath in through her nose.

"Alright, _kids . . . _here goes nothing! _FIRE IN THE HOLE!"_

She squared the cannon . . . flexed her hand on the trigger . . . . . . and then, in the instantaneous flash of time in between the metallic creak of the trigger being pulled, and the deafening blast of the plasma gun as it fired an eight-inch thick beam of blinding green energy straight toward the gate . . . . . Ralph saw something.

It was nothing but a blur of color and movement, jumping into the frame of the portal arch an immeasurable fraction of a second before the cannon fired . . . . but it was there, all the same.

_TTTSSZZZZEEEEEOOOOOOOM!_

_"AAAAAGGGHH!"_

The plasma cannon fired . . . . someone let out a shrill, ear-piercing shriek of terror that was all but drowned out beneath the roar of the blast, and then . . .

. . . . instead of colliding against the invisible firewall with an earth-shattering explosion . . . .

. . . . the plasma beam shot straight through the Fix-It Felix gate, as if there were absolutely no barrier there at all, and rocketed out until it hit the far wall of Game Central Station, all the way across on the other side of the transit. It exploded into a median space between two other game ports and crumbled an enormous section of the wall like it was made of snow, sending huge pieces of rubble crashing down deafeningly to the floor and billowing up enormous clouds of dust.

For a few seconds, everyone simply sat there, frozen in shock.

Then, when the glowing haze and smoke of the plasma blast began to fade, and Ralph could see clearly through to the gate again . . . his eyes widened and his jaw practically hit the floor. He whirled around to face the game entrance and abruptly dropped Felix and Vanellope, who gasped and groaned lightly as they hit the ground on their hands and knees.

Ralph didn't even hear them. He was staring speechlessly at the small, fragile figure who had just darted unsuspectingly in front of the Fix-It Felix Jr. gate, and then ducked down seconds before being obliterated by the cannon fire, dodging the blast by inches and diving down to her stomach on the floor where she lay now, looking up at Calhoun and the smoking barrel of the gun with an absolutely staggered, bug-eyed expression of shock.

Ralph blinked, his brain reeling and refusing to believe what his eyes were telling it.

"M . . . . . _Mike?" _he whispered.

His voice resonated faintly down the hallway, and Mike slowly tilted her head to peer around Calhoun, her hair half-falling in her eyes. Her gaze met his with a piercing flash of green, and she froze like a wax mannequin.

_". . . . Ralph?" _she squeaked, in a breathless sound so weak it was scarcely audible.

For one surreal instant, they simply stared at each other . . . . then, Mike's eyes rolled back, and her head dropped down limply to the floor in a cold faint.

Calhoun, who had been kneeling there, paralyzed in place with the cannon still balanced over one shoulder, slowly turned her head to look from the collapsed girl and the demolished far wall of Game Central Station back to Ralph, her eyes wide and inexpressibly thunderstruck.

"Wwwww_wwww__hoops,"_ she said softly.

A/N; What's this? A cliffhanger of ELLIPSED TIME? Sorry, couldn't resist ending the chapter on that note :D let me know what you think!


	22. Chapter 21: Welcome to GCS

A/N: Huzzah! Update! I was planning to make this chapter longer, but I decided to split this segment up over two chapters in favor of being able to post this one sooner. I hope to have the next one up relatively quickly.

Quick reminder; sections written entirely in italics are flashbacks. Enjoy!

Dislcaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 21: Welcome to Game Central Station_

Ralph blinked, reeling in shock, his brain refusing to believe what his eyes were telling it.

"M . . . . . _Mike?" _he whispered.

His voice resonated faintly down the hallway, and Mike slowly tilted her head to peer around Calhoun, her hair half-falling in her eyes. Her gaze met his with a piercing flash of green, and she froze like a wax mannequin.

_"Ralph?" _she squeaked, in a breathless sound so weak it was scarcely audible.

For one surreal instant, they simply stared at each other . . . . then, Mike's eyes rolled back, and her head dropped down limply to the floor in a cold faint.

Calhoun, who had been kneeling there, rooted in shock with the cannon still balanced over one shoulder, slowly turned her head to look from the collapsed girl and the demolished far wall of the station back at Ralph, her eyes wide and inexpressibly thunderstruck.

"Wwwwwwwwhoops," she said quietly.

Felix and Vanellope both got up slowly off of the floor where Ralph had dropped them and moved to stand on either side of him with their mouths open and their eyes wide, looking back and forth between Calhoun, the enormous, smoking crater she had just blasted into the wall, and the spot on the floor where Mike was lying, sprawled unconscious across the Fix-It Felix Jr. threshold.

The humming of the plasma cannon died down and then faded abruptly, and for ten seconds that seemed to last a small eternity, each of them simply stood there silently and stared.

Vanellope was the first to finally find her voice again.

"Um . . . what . . . . . _what just happened?" _she asked blankly.

Her words instantly punctured through the mute bubble of Ralph's mind-boggling shock, jolting him out of his stupor like a slap in the face. The next thing he knew, his heart was in his mouth, a hollow streak of panic was seizing up in his insides, and he was bolting toward the gate as fast as his feet would carry him, half shoving Calhoun and her gun out of the way as he went. He fell clumsily to his knees and slid the remaining few feet.

_"MIKE!?" _he cried incredulously, still struggling to believe that she was really there, even as he looked at her lying there motionless on the floor right in front of him. Somehow, the mere sight of her outside of Masterwork was almost too jarring to be real, as if a phantom occupant of his dreams had inexplicably popped up in the waking world. With shaking hands, he gingerly, almost fearfully grasped her small frame with his fingertips and rolled her onto her back, taking extreme caution to cup the back of her head in his palm to keep it from hitting the floor. Her hair fell out of her face as he turned her over, revealing her peacefully closed eyes and blank expression, almost as if she was only sleeping.

After another second of stunned silence, Ralph heard the frantic scrambling of footsteps behind him as his three friends hurried down the hallway and circled around Mike's other side. Felix immediately kneeled down and began anxiously inspecting her with his eyes from head to toe, then breathed a heavy sigh of relief when he found no sign of physical injury.

"Oh, thank merciful _heavens!" _he gasped, leaning back and covering his forehead with his hand. "She isn't hurt!"

"Isn't _hurt?" _Ralph repeated wildly, shooting Felix an incredulous glare. "Felix, she's un_conscious! _Hit her with your hammer already!"

"It's o_kay, _Ralph, she only fainted from shock! She's going to be _fine. _Besides, my hammer wouldn't do anything . . . . nothing's _broken, _she's only passed out."

Despite Felix's obvious comforting intentions, this information did nothing to alleviate the fraught knot of panic squeezing tighter and tighter in Ralph's chest as he looked fretfully down at the wilted figure lying at his knees. Not knowing what else to do - but desperate to do _something - _he slowly lifted Mike off the floor . . . as carefully as if she were made of glass . . . and held her cradled in both hands, her arms and legs hanging limply down over his fingers. He looked up and pinned the others with a wild, pleading stare.

"You guys, _look at her!_ What do I _do!?"_

But each of the three onlookers were clearly still lagging a few steps behind him, their eyes wide and questioning as they mentally raced to catch up.

_"Ralph,"_ Vanellope said bluntly, trying to reign in his frenetic attention and keep herself calm at the same time, gesturing to the limp body in his hands. "You're telling us that this . . . . _this, _is _Mike? Masterwork _Mike?"

"YES!" Ralph cried impatiently, a note of hysteria creeping into his voice. "_YES, _this is _her, _alright? Now what do I _do with her? _Do we try to wake her up!?_"_

"But . . . but I thought you said she refused to leave her game?" Felix protested confusedly, ignoring his question. "What on earth is she doing here?"

"Wait a minute, wait just _one hot minute!"_

Ralph, Felix and Vanellope looked up at Calhoun, who until that moment had been standing over them silently as they kneeled around Mike, her eyes wide and her jaw hovering soundlessly in shock at what she had just done . . . what she had _almost _just done. Now, her brow was narrowed sharply in angry bewilderment as she straightened up and scanned her eyes around the empty station.

"Forget _what _she's doing here . . . the question is _how?_ How she did she even _get_ _into_ the station in the first place!?" Calhoun demanded incredulously, gesturing sharply to the other gates. Her eyes flickered imperceptibly as they landed on the smoking wreckage of the laser blast on the far wall, and she swallowed thickly and pointed to the crater. "What happened to the _firewalls? _I thought you two said the whole arcade was in _lockdown?"_

"It _was!" _Vanellope snapped back. "The head SP said they'd tell us as soon as they opened the game gates again!"

"Well, I think it's pretty _obvious _that didn't happen!" Calhoun pointed up above them to the Fix-it Felix arch. "This gate is _wide open_, and I just shot enough juice through it to flash-cook a _T-Rex!"_

"NO," Ralph snarled at her abruptly, his temper finally heating up to surface and boiling over. "What you _DID _is nearly _blast _Michelangela into SMITHEREENS!"

Calhoun started and widened her eyes slightly, momentarily taken aback by the ferocity of his tone and stricken for an instant with a visible stab of guilt . . . then, she quickly hardened again, flattening her mouth into a practical line and returning his furious stare unflinchingly.

"Look, Wreck-It, it was an _accident, _okay? How was _I _supposed to know she was there?" she retorted fiercely. "You saw what happened! She just popped out of nowhere and jumped _right in front of the beam! _What was I _supposed _to do?"

"You were su_pposed _to LISTEN TO US and just _WAIT IN THE GAME!"_ Ralph roared, abruptly shooting to his feet and bearing down menacingly toward Calhoun, his hands protectively cradling Mike closer to his chest.

"_Oh, _right! I was supposed to just sit there and _wait _for all my men to be unplugged!? Easy for _you _to say, you _walking stack of -"_

"BOTH of you _meatheads_, just _SHUT UP _for a minute!" Vanellope stood up between them and shouted commandingly. "Now isn't the time to play the _blame game! _We have to figure out what the _nuts_ is going on here!"

Ralph and Calhoun each opened their mouths quickly to scream at each other again . . . then caught one another's gaze and stopped, glaring mutual daggers and reluctantly backing down again.

"Pipsqueak is right," Calhoun muttered grudgingly, tossing her head indicatively toward Mike. "If _this _girl managed to get here, then somehow the lockdown must have already - "

"Wait!" Felix interrupted her suddenly, shushing them and holding his hands out for quiet. "Everybody, _listen . . . . . _do you hear something?"

The group immediately fell silent and each of them looked up, staring off into space and straining their ears. After a few seconds, Ralph heard it, and threw a questioning glance back down at his protagonist.

"What _is _that?" he muttered.

Felix narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and held up his finger to silence Ralph again, concentrating on the noise. Rippling just perceptibly through the still atmosphere of the station was a faint, electronic buzzing sound, a constant whisper of barely audible crackling and fizzling like white noise on a distant radio . . . . but then, every few seconds or so at sporadic intervals, it was interrupted by short, high pitched blips, jagged fragments of speech that was impossible to decipher.

"Is . . . . is that coming from the PA system?" Vanellope asked, walking a few feet away and turning in slow circles, trying to listen for the source of the sound.

"Hold on . . . I think it's getting louder," Calhoun hissed under her breath.

Everyone quickly silenced again and held their breath, listening . . . sure enough, the steady rhythm of static and broken sound bytes was growing incrementally louder by the second, and as it did the fragments of garbled speech became sharper and more frequent, until at last they were able to pick up the bare bones of what sounded almost like a complete sentence.

_"MmfhhZZzzwwwah arning . . . zwah-arning . . . . ZZZZfirewalls disszzZZzbled . . . . "_

Ralph narrowed his eyes confusedly.

_"What _did it say?"

Vanellope and Felix both shrugged at him, but as soon as the message had completed one full circuit Calhoun's eyes suddenly shot open with a blazing flash of recognition.

"It said the _firewalls are disabled!" _she cried.

The three of them blinked and opened their mouths in unison.

"You . . . you mean _all _of them?" Felix muttered in disbelief.

"How else do you explain _her _being here?" Calhoun pointed to Mike. "Either the system malfunctioned somehow, or somebody else tried to bust out like _I _did, and _succeeded_ . . . . but whichever it is, I'm not sticking around to find out!"

Ralph and the others watched as Calhoun ran back into the Fix-It Felix entryway, retrieved the plasma cannon - which had been dropped and forgotten halfway down the plug passage - and stormed back, hoisting the massive gun up across her shoulders with a short grunt of effort.

"I'm booking straight for Hero's Duty while the firewalls are down," she declared firmly in response to their questioning stares. "For all we know, this breach could only be temporary, and I _can't_ miss my chance to get back."

Ralph and Vanellope exchanged brief glances, then nodded at her in silent agreement. Felix looked reluctant to let her go, but he quickly steeled his worrying brow and nodded as well, taking her free hand in his and squeezing it briefly.

"Of course, honey pot," he said understandingly. "Don't waste any time. We'll find each other as soon as the lockdown officially ends."

Calhoun's eyes softened for just a moment, and she gave Felix a tender smile of gratitude before leaning down and kissing him fiercely on the mouth.

"I'll do you one better," she answered quickly, straightening back up. "If the gates are still open an hour from now, we'll meet back here and rendezvous in the station. They won't trap us in _here, _even if they do reinstate the lockdown," she looked up at Ralph and Vanellope. "How about _you_ two? Sound like a plan?"

Ralph narrowed his eyes at Calhoun, then glanced questioningly down at Vanellope, who only shrugged up at him.

"Your call, big guy. No matter what, I'm just following _you._"

Ralph exhaled anxiously, then knit his brow and nodded.

"Okay, o_kay. _We meet back here in _one hour."_

Calhoun grinned confidently and saluted the group with one hand, shooting a final, loving look back at Felix before turning and sprinting like a stealth runner straight across the station in the direction of Hero's Duty, balancing the plasma cannon with both hands. They watched her with baited breath until she had vanished safely inside the gate, then breathed a communal sigh of relief.

"The walls really _are _down, then," Felix muttered gratefully, turning to peer around the station at each of the ports in turn. "I only hope its for _good . . . "_

"I don't know, Fix-It . . . . I wouldn't bet on that horse just _yet_," Vanellope frowned, trolling her gaze once critically around the station. She then turned to Ralph, her demeanor suddenly shifting. She raised one eyebrow and eyed him curiously, reaching out to poke at Mike's limp, hanging arm with her fingertip. "So, uh . . . _Ralph . . _. what are we gonna do with _this _one, then?"

"Huh?" Ralph looked down, his mind briefly blanking in response to her question . . . . then, all at once, he abruptly remembered the warm weight of the unconscious girl in his palms and nearly had a micro heart attack, letting out a sharp, delayed yelp of panic and hunching over to peer frantically at Mike's calm face again, tilting her toward him with his hands. With all the strangeness and chaos of the moment, he'd actually managed to somehow forget her condition, if only for a few seconds. His pulse pounding and his breath quickening, he shot a frenzied look down at Vanellope.

"Come on, kid, we've gotta get her home before the walls are back up!" he blurted rapidly, turning and setting off toward the Masterwork gate as swiftly as he dare go while carrying Mike in his hands.

"Hey, _wait up!" _Vanellope cried, jumping and tearing off after him.

As they ran away, Felix cupped his hands around his mouth and leaned up onto his tiptoes, shouting at their shrinking backs.

"Don't _worry, _Ralph, she's going to be just fine! I _promise!_" he called, in a reassuring tone that nevertheless failed to reassure Ralph in the least. "I'll see you in an hour! I'm going to stay here and fix the station wall . . . _and_ try to figure out what's going on!"

Just as they were almost out of earshot, Vanellope looked back over her shoulder and waved to Felix, nodding once in recognition . . . but Ralph had immediately forgotten about everything apart from the still, shallowly breathing body cradled protectively in his hands as he ran. He and Vanellope quickly reached the Masterwork gate and hurried through without so much as a flicker of protest from the now defunct firewall. Seconds before they were about to slip into the black mouth of the tunnel, Ralph let himself carefully slow to halt at the edge of the opening and take one last worried, inspecting look down at Mike before the darkness of the passageway would obscure her from his sight. Breathing heavily, his brow knit again with a fresh, sharp pain of anxiety at the frightening, comatose blankness of her pale face.

_Why . . . . why, of all the possible times she could have chosen to venture outside of her game . . . . __**why **__did she have to choose that **exact** moment?_

"Mike . . . " Ralph whispered helplessly, gently tightening his hold on her and lifting her closer to his face, as if hoping the proximity of his voice might somehow wake her up; _"Mike . . . . _please . . . . _please, _be okay . . . "

Shortly behind them in the station, Ralph's ears suddenly picked up the sound of multiple footsteps hurrying across the linoleum floor, along with shouting voices and the repeated loop of the automated message on the PA system, which was now nearly clear enough to make out completely . . . .

_"Warning . . . . wwwzzzwarning . . . . firewalls disszabled. Warning . . . . do not attempt to re-engage ffrrZZzirewalls . . . . "_

"RALPH!" a piercing voice cut through the rising hubbub in the station. It was Vanellope, dashing back to the tunnel opening to pin him with an impatient, confused stare. "Ralph, come _on! _Are we going in _or not?"_

"Yes! Yes, sorry!" Ralph tore his attention away from the station gate and plunged into the dark passageway after Vanellope, listening carefully for the patter of her footsteps in front of him as they made their way as quickly as possible around twisting banks and blind, sloping curves. Even more disconcerted by the darkness than he'd anticipated, Ralph hugged Mike cautiously to his chest, half-fearing that she would somehow slip away from him in the shadowy haze. As he ran, the gears in his head were churning ferociously, grasping over and over at the disjointed fragments of everything that had happened within the last fifteen minutes in a hopeless effort to try and determine what series of events had led them to that moment.

_Mike . . . . how? How in the __**world**__ had this happened?_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_After the first few frightening minutes of gruelingly slow forward progress into the dim expanse, Mike's mounting fear was at last inarguably confirmed . . . . the further she ventured into the tunnel on the left, the darker it got. There was absolutely no light marking the way of the passage at all, and the circle of soft twilight opening into the safety of the Masterwork evening had quickly disappeared behind her around the bend of a sharp corner, leaving her suspended blindly in a consuming blackness that seemed to stretch forever onward and backward._

_With a sheen of cold perspiration beading at her forehead and the back of her neck, her breath heaving shallowly in and out in a steady, nervous rhythm, Mike made her way slowly through the tunnel, refusing to let herself stop for even an instant for fear that she might be unable to make herself start again. She inched forward with one hand blindly groping the air in front of her and the other locked in a death-grip around the handle of her Battle-strokes brush, holding it raised defensively above her head like a club, ready to strike at the first sign of a disturbance._

_As she felt her way continuously through the winding tunnel, the minutes seemed to meld together into one surreal, continuous moment of unchanging time. In that moment, she forgot all about Ralph, and Masterwork, and why she had even made the decision to brave the tunnel in the first place . . . . she forgot about everything except the slow, steady, continual motion of her footsteps, creeping unseeingly along a smooth, invisible floor._

_Don't think about it, just keep moving . . . . just keep moving . . . . just keep __**moving **__. . . ._

_Then, all of a sudden, she reached the midpoint of a gradually curving bend . . . . and there was light again._

_She had no idea whether she had been inching blindly forward for one minute, or twenty . . . or more . . . . but one second, she was lost in a seemingly directionless abyss of darkness, and the next, she was blinking and reeling in a searing, white wash of light streaming through a circular opening just a few yards straight ahead._

_As soon as her eyes adjusted to the brightness and the sudden, disorienting immediacy of the tunnel's end, Mike's heart leapt joyfully into her throat and she took the remaining stretch of the passage at an all-out sprint, racing toward the light with the eagerness of an exhausted swimmer coming up for air._

_Her chest heaving breathlessly and her eyes wide with anticipation, Mike burst out of the end of the tunnel . . . . and immediately went tumbling down a short flight of three steps leading up to the platform at the base of the opening. She opened her mouth and let out a high-pitched, piercing yelp of shock as her feet stumbled out from under her and she fell flat on her face at the bottom of the stairs, sliding a few feet forward across the slippery floor on the front of her smock. _

_The paintbrush flew out of her fingers and went skidding away, spinning rapidly in circles down the opening of another short hallway directly in front of her. Immediately jerking her head up off the floor and whipping the hair out of her eyes, Mike watched with a stunned expression as the brush slid all the way down the passage toward a large archway that appeared to open into a chamber even bigger and brighter than the one into which she had just fallen . . . . when suddenly, just as it was losing speed and about to skid slowly across the threshold of the arch . . . . something stopped it. The paintbrush halted abruptly and bounced back a few inches, as if it had run into the edge of something solid, like a wall . . . . but as far as she could see, there was nothing there._

_Narrowing her eyes confusedly, Mike groaned softly and picked herself up off the floor, dusting off the front of her smock with her hands and lifting her head to look around at the strange room in which she was standing. The ceiling was at least three times as high as the one in her kitchen, and the entire cavernous chamber was gray and bare, save for the short platform and the end of the tunnel that terminated in the blank wall behind her. A faint shiver pricked Mike's skin with goose-bumps as she looked around and realized that the hole from which she had just exited was the only other opening in the room._

_"The tunnel on the right . . . ." she muttered gravely under her breath, trolling her eyes anxiously around her. " . . . . it leads somewhere __**else **__. . ."_

_Her heart beginning to pound in a tense, stringent combination of fear and excitement, Mike fisted one hand in the chest of her smock to steady herself and slowly tiptoed forward to the short, wide hallway directly opposite the tunnel. As soon as she reached it, she furtively hugged the golden, metallic wall with her back, sliding cautiously along it and continually darting her head in every direction, her eyes peeled and her ears perked for any signs of life. So far, the world at the end of the left tunnel appeared to be an empty, silent place, the stillness of the air almost palpable, as if hers was the only whisper of living breath disturbing it. _

_Once she was satisfied that there was no one nearby, Mike eased away from the wall and crept timidly to the middle of the hall, crouching down to retrieve her paintbrush. She picked it up and eyed it thoughtfully for a moment, then tucked it back into the neck of her smock and looked up at the wide, empty archway sitting quietly ten feet in front of her._

_It certainly didn't __**look **__as if there was anything there . . . . . but __**something **__had stopped the brush, she was sure of it . . . ._

_Taking a few deep, steadying breaths and steeling her resolve as firmly as she could, Mike set her brow and her shoulders determinedly and marched up to the end of the hall, stopping just inches from the threshold. As she drew near, she became aware of a faint, just barely audible buzzing sound vibrating the air around her._

_Mike held up one hand, squeezed her eyes shut . . . and reached forward. _

_Her arm jutted straight out across the threshold, meeting nothing but thin air._

_She cracked one eye open and peered down the length of her outstretched arm, wiggling her fingers experimentally. As she moved, the low buzzing sound in her ears grew a fraction louder, and seemed to fluctuate in time with the motions of her hand across the blank space._

_Bewildered, but now too consumed with curiosity to remember to be afraid, Mike held her breath and took one step through the gate._

_As she passed directly over the line of the line of the threshold, the buzzing noise instantly sharpened to a loud, piercing whine and held for a split second, penetrating into her head like an invisible needle . . . and then, just as quickly, the second she was on the other side, it vanished, and was replaced with a calm, almost deafening silence._

_Mike let out her breath in one burst, gasping with relief as a huge, pleasantly surprised grin spread across her face . . . then, she looked up, and the grin immediately disappeared again, her jaw descending slowly and her eyes popping wide as she gazed out at the vast immensity of the place in which she now found herself._

_"Wow," Mike whispered in breathless awe, holding one hand over her wildly hammering heart as her brain raced to take in the details of everything around her. She was standing on the edge of an absolutely enormous room, a room big enough to hold her entire house well within the confines of its walls and ceiling. It was filled with a bright, golden light that seemed to glow from everywhere at once, and lined up neatly on either of its elongated sides were rows of gates . . . . gate after gate after gate, each of them identical to the one behind her. As she was darting her gaze raptly around her incredible new surroundings, a slow, steady wave of movement suddenly caught her eye, making her pause. Above one of the gates on the opposite side of the room was a narrow, rectangular sign, and on the sign were words written in glowing letters and scrolling slowly across the placard from right to left._

_"'Jolly Jogger?'" Mike quirked one eyebrow as she read the words on the sign aloud to herself. She turned to look at the sign above the gate beside it . . . and then the one after that, and the one after that. "'Mall of the Dead' . . . 'Ultimate King Fisher'. . . . 'Medieval Madness'? What the heck does - " then, she stopped abruptly as a gear clicked into place in her brain, and she snapped her fingers with a small, excited gasp of understanding. She spun around and craned her neck back to look up at the electronic sign posted above the gate she'd just come through . . . . and sure enough, there it was, spelled out clear as day in bright, scrolling letters . . . _

_"Aha! Masterwork!" she cried triumphantly, curling one hand into a fist and pumping it downward. "Of __**course**__! These are portals leading into the other games! All I have to do now is find is the one that says Fix-It . . . . Felix . . . . . . Jr.?"_

_Something bright and somehow instantaneously familiar flashed suddenly at the bottom of Mike's periphery, and she started, trailing off her excited muttering as she lowered her gaze to the bottom of the archway. The second her eyes focused and she realized what she was looking at, she let out a startled yelp and jumped back from the Masterwork gate._

_There, hanging suspended in midair at the bottom of the arch was a hovering silhouette of flashing blue static . . . an outline, like the messy tracing of a figure drawn in pale blue electricity on an invisible surface perpendicular to the floor. As she narrowed her eyes at it, Mike realized that the outline was floating in the exact place that she had stepped over the threshold of the gate just seconds before . . . . and not only that, but it was also slowly expanding. Mike watched as the ring of rippling blue electricity wavered and stretched until it had lost the shape of her silhouette and formed a wide, gaping hole that was slowly growing toward the edges of the archway. Her mouth hanging half open in a perplexed, but fascinated stare, Mike followed the path of the expanding ripple with her head until it finally reached the perimeter of the gate . . . . the instant it did, there was a blinding blue flash, followed by a brief shower of sparks and a blaring electronic crackle._

_BBRRRZZZRRKKRRZZT!_

_Mike jumped and yelped in surprise as the streaks of blue electricity shot in lightning-fast ripples down the edges of the Masterwork gate, across the lines where the wall met the floor on either side, and then back up the arches of the gates to the immediate left and right. Once there, the same motion repeated itself, but at ten times the speed . . . the blue lights traced like a rippling wave over what seemed to be invisible walls filling the game portals, and as soon as they reached the edges they exploded in loud, crackling flashes and moved onto to the next gates. _

_Mike began to walk slowly backward toward the middle of the enormous room, lifting her hands to cover her mouth and watching helplessly in utter confusion as the blue streaks of electricity proceeded rapidly down the row of gates in either direction, frying each of them in turn with a burst of sparks and a crackling POP . . . . within ten seconds, the entire wall of portals was left smoking, and the blue streak had already snaked across the floor in the blink of an eye and was coursing through the gates on the opposite wall as well._

_Before she even knew what was happening, it was already over . . . . every game portal in the room had been flashed and fizzled out, and as soon as it finished bolting through the last one, the blue light vanished as if it had never been, disappearing with a tiny, electric sound like the cracking of a whip._

_Mike stood stock still fifteen paces from the Masterwork entrance, frozen with panic and staring speechlessly at the other gates as the last traces of smoke and sparks faded, leaving them sitting there just as quietly and inconspicuously and they had been a moment ago. Slowly, she lowered her hands from her mouth and turned her head to scan once around the enormous room. She waited a few seconds, adrenaline rushing and her heart pounding in her ears . . . . but nothing happened. Everything around her was still and silent again._

_Cautiously lowering her hands further, she squinted one eye in stunned bafflement._

_"What . . . . what in the __**world**__ - ?"_

_BBBRRRAAAARRM! BBBRRRAAAARRM! BBBRRRAAAARRM! _

_Mike screamed and jumped nearly a foot in the air as her puzzled musings were abruptly cut off by the piercing blare of a deafening alarm, seeming to blast repeatedly from every corner of the room at once. Mike clamped both hands over her ears and hunched down, her chest seizing in terror as she whipped her head wildly in every direction, waiting for someone or something to spring out at her at any second. In the midst of the frenzy, she suddenly realized that underneath the noise of the alarm was a calm, disembodied voice, repeating the same few words over and over . . . _

_"Warning. Warning. Firewalls disabled. Warning . . . do not attempt to re-engage firewalls. Warning. Warning. Firewalls disabled. Warning . . . . "_

_"HEY! YOU! STOP RIGHT THERE!"_

_Crying out faintly, just barely audible beneath the earsplitting combination of the alarm and the electronic message, was a second voice, coming from somewhere nearby . . . Mike turned in the direction of the nearly drowned-out shouting and jumped, her eyes widening in panic as she suddenly saw a person - a blue, glowing woman who seemed to have appeared from nowhere - storming furiously towards her across the middle of the enormous room. As she approached, she pulled something from her belt . . . a small, non-descript little black object that she then gripped tightly in one hand and brandished in front of her like a weapon._

_Blind fear seizing hold of her, Mike whirled around and began to run._

_"Oh, NO YOU DON'T!"_

_The woman let out a savage snarl, and Mike cried out in shock as she felt a hand suddenly snag the back of her smock and yank her backwards, choking her with her collar for a split second before spinning her haphazardly back around, making her stumble and turning her face to face with the panting blue woman. _

_She opened her mouth to cry out, but before she could make a sound, the woman had thrust her arm forward and jammed the blunt end of her hand-held instrument into Mike's abdomen. Mike doubled over with a reflexive gasp, and suddenly there was a dull crackling sound, accompanied by what felt like a river of white-hot pain jolting and rushing through every sinew of her body . . . . . but then, only a split-second after it began, the ripple of energy gave a tremendous jolt and bounced back, shooting back out of her as quickly as it had entered. Her whole body trembling violently, but the pain instantly dissipating, Mike shot her eyes open and saw the blue woman standing there in front of her with her mouth open and her eyes rolling back in her head, as visibly jolting currents of electricity seemed to double back from the small device in her hand and paralyze her from head to toe with crippling waves of shock._

_The blue woman stood for another slow, terrible moment, rooted in place by the flashing volts coursing through her . . . then, the buzzing abruptly ceased, and the woman collapsed on the floor in a smoking heap at Mike's feet. She lay there only a few seconds before her body blipped into a blue singularity and vanished straight into the floor, leaving nothing behind but a faint smell of burning ozone. _

_The instant the blue woman disappeared, the blaring sound of the alarm and the warning message gave a blunt, crackling hiccup . . . . there was a rush of static, then a high-pitched whine, and the alarm abruptly fell silent._

_Her chest heaving, Mike blinked down in reeling disbelief at the spot on the floor where the strange woman had been seconds earlier . . . . then, her brain kicking into terrified, frenzied autopilot, she spun on her heel and took off in a dead sprint straight down the long aisle running alongside the wall, looking up with wide, panicked eyes at the scrolling game titles as they flashed rapidly by. _

_Got to find it, got to find it . . . . come on, Fix-It Felix Jr., Fix-It Felix Jr., FIX-IT FELIX JR. . . . . ._

_"YES!" Mike gasped gratefully as she finally spotted the right name, scrolling above a quiet portal just a few gates ahead. She ran with all her might toward the Fix-It Felix Jr. entrance, the pounding throbs of her heartbeat pushing down all the terror and confusion of the last few minutes and clinging desperately, joyfully to the hope of finally finding Ralph on the other side of the approaching archway._

_Her eyes lighting up as she gasped out a final, exhausted cry of elation, Mike jumped out in front of the Fix-It Felix Jr. gate, turned to look excitedly inside . . . ._

_. . . . and with a startled scream, dove down flat to her face on the floor, just seconds in time to avoid being hit by a gigantic, searing hot blast of green light that burst out of the gate and scorched the air inches above her head._

_TTTSSZZZZEEEEEOOOOOOOM!_

_"AAAAAGGGHH!"_

_Following the roar of the blast, there was a deafening boom and a floor-shaking tremor quaking out from somewhere behind her as the beam hit the far wall of the room. She kept herself flattened on the ground with her hands over her head until the sounds of crashing and crumbling finally stopped . . . . then, with her ears ringing and her whole body shaking like a leaf . . . . too shell-shocked for the reality of what had just happened to fully yet register in her brain . . . . Mike slowly, ever so slowly, lifted her head and peered, wide-eyed, through the gradually fading smoke into the Fix-It Felix Jr. gate._

_Crouched on the floor directly in front of her and holding an enormous, cylindrical metal weapon over her shoulder . . . . the hole at the end of it still smoldering and trained straight in her direction . . . . was a blonde, stunned-looking woman, staring back at her with gaping eyes and an open mouth._

_Mike blinked at her._

_Then, drifting softly from some unseen point further down the tunnel . . . she heard a voice that made her frantically churning thoughts grind all at once to an immediate, screeching halt._

_"M . . . . . __**Mike**__?"_

_She slowly tilted her head to peer around the kneeling figure of the blonde woman . . . . and there he was, all nine feet of him, standing a little ways off at the end of the hall and gaping back at her as if he'd never been more shocked to see anyone in his life. _

_Mike's eyes went, if possible, even wider._

_" . . . . Ralph?" she squeaked, in a breathless sound so weak it was scarcely audible. _

_For one surreal instant, they simply stared at each other . . . . then, Mike felt a staggering wave of dizziness sweep over her, and a blurred haziness began to creep in at the edges of her vision. The last thing she felt was a cold stiffness settling over her limbs and a swoon of overwhelming sleepiness . . . . then, everything went dark. _

A/N: Is it cheap, ending at that same place twice? Oh well . . . at least we're all caught up now. Let me know what you think! Reviews make me smile.


	23. Chapter 22: Meet the Sidekick

A/N: This one? Was pretty fun to write. Hope it's fun to read as well.

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 22: Meet the Sidekick_

Vanellope burst out of the end of the Masterwork tunnel and into the soft, warm light of the game almost twenty paces ahead of Ralph, skidding to a stop on the dirt path and bracing her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Heaving a relieved, thankful exhale as the bright opening finally came into view, Ralph picked up speed and hurried to catch up with her, running the last few yards and slowing to a halt at Vanellope's side just as she was looking up at the sprawling landscape of the game for the first time. She abruptly stopped panting and stood up straight, her arms falling limp at her sides and her eyes widening in awe.

"Holy mother of _milk-duds," _she muttered under her breath, turning in a slow circle and marveling at the twilight-painted mountains and the calm, gentle surging of the ocean, lapping at the edge of the beach. "This is a _video game? _But . . . but its so _real_-looking! Look at the high-def on those -"

"Yeah, yeah, weather and sunsets and all that," Ralph cut her off impatiently, jerking his head toward Mike's house and motioning for Vanellope to follow him. "You can check out the view _later_, kid, right now we need to get her inside and try to . . . " but as he turned to take his first step up the path, Ralph stopped suddenly, starting in surprise and blinking as his brain registered the paradox of what he was looking at. ". . . . wake . . . her . . . up?"

Vanellope looked up quizzically at him, then in the direction he was staring.

"What? What's the matter?"

Ralph squinted, his lips parting in confusion.

"Her . . . her house," he stammered. "I can _see _it!"

And sure enough, there it was . . . . despite the fact that they were standing well outside the glitch radius of the building, Mike's yellow-brick house was sitting right there before their eyes at the edge of the beach, darkly shadowed by the last, long rays of the sinking sun . . . but undeniably there nonetheless, as clear and visible as the dirt and grass they were standing on.

Vanellope shrugged blankly.

"Um . . . . yeah? So?"

Ralph stared perplexedly a second longer, then shook himself and set off at a swift jog toward the inexplicably visible house. Vanellope hurriedly followed after him, passing him on the left and turning back to quirk one eyebrow at him.

_"So?" _she repeated pressingly. "What's the big deal about being able to _see her house?"_

Ralph frowned uncertainly and shook his head.

"I told you, remember? Her house had a glitch when I came here before . . . you could only see it once you got close enough."

"Well, then what's that big yellow thing we're _running _toward?"

Ralph rolled his eyes exasperatedly, slowing to a halt as they came to the front door.

"Forget it, we'll talk about it _later_."

Vanellope narrowed her eyes unappreciatively, but shrugged it off and reached up on her toes to twist the knob on the red wooden door, darting inside without hesitation and holding it wide open for Ralph. Turning sideways and holding his breath, he clutched Mike as close to his chest as possible without crushing her and hunched down, just barely managing to squeeze them both through the narrow doorframe without getting stuck. As soon as he was safely inside, he let out his breath in a quick burst and darted straight for the dining table, the only piece of furniture in the conjoined rooms that offered a flat, clean surface that was wide enough.

Vanellope shut the door and turned to survey the dim, shadowy interior of the room, squinting her eyes in frustration and slowly following Ralph to the table. The only illumination in the house came from the last weak, pink rays of the sunset struggling to filter through the curtained windows.

"I can't see _anything," _Vanellope complained, feeling around for a dining chair and climbing up onto it, standing up on the seat and peering across the table at Ralph. "Where are the _lights_ in this dump?"

Pointedly ignoring her question, Ralph slid one elbow across the surface of the dining table to clear off the few odd rags and paintbrushes that were scattered there . . . then he slowly, tenderly laid Mike down on it, settling her limp limbs as gently as possible on the hard, wooden surface and keeping his left hand cupped beneath her head, tilting her face just slightly upwards. Once she was safely stretched out on the table, Ralph's feverish train of thought came grinding to an abrupt stop as he realized he had no idea what to do next.

"How . . . h-how do I wake her up?" he stammered, shooting a pleading look across the table at Vanellope.

She shrugged animatedly, raising her eyebrows at him.

"How should I know? Maybe you oughta give her _mouth-to-mouth_."

Despite the obvious trace of sarcasm in her voice, the mere utterance of the suggestion was enough to send an instant flush of heat blooming rapidly up Ralph's neck and into his face. He glared at Vanellope and tried to discretely gulp down the instant lump in his throat, momentarily grateful for the dimness of the room which helped to hide the color blazing in his cheeks.

"This is _serious, _Vanellope!" he snapped, his voice cracking slightly and betraying his flustered reaction to the idea. She only shrugged higher and stared helplessly back at him.

"And I _seriously _don't _know!" _she reiterated obstinately. "What do you want from me? I've never had to wake up a knocked-out person before, either! Just . . . . I don't _know_, Ralph, try _shaking her _or something!"

Glowering skeptically, but unable to think of a better idea himself, Ralph growled in frustration and leaned over Michelangela, reluctantly prodding her side with his fingertips and jostling her only the slightest bit.

"Mike?" he tested out loud, knitting his brow dubiously. "Can you _hear me? _Mike. _MIKE. _WAKE UP, Mike!"

They waited a few seconds. Nothing happened.

Vanellope rolled her eyes and groaned exasperatedly, jumping to her knees on the tabletop and shoving Ralph's hand out of the way.

"Geez, _'fraidy-cat_, are you trying to wake her up_, _or _rock her back to sleep?"_ she snorted derisively. "Let _me _do it!"

Clearing her throat lightly and rolling up her sleeves, Vanellope leaned down over Mike, took hold of her shoulders firmly in both hands . . . . and with a deep breath, began throttling her so hard her torso lifted up off the table, her arms flopping with each violent shake and her head lolling backward, bobbing lightly up and down.

"HE_LLO! EARTH TO MIKE! _YOU ALIVE IN THERE? COME ON, CHICKADEE, RISE AND SHINE! TIME TO _WAKE UP!" _Vanellope hollered at the top of her small lungs, hovering her face inches above Mike's and punctuating every syllable with another stiff jiggle of the limp shoulders in her hands.

Ralph recoiled in horror, immediately reaching out and snatching up the assailant by the hood of her sweatshirt, wrenching her off of Mike and holding her dangling in the air at eye level.

"Are you crazy!? What do you think you're _doing, _Vanellope?_ Stop it,_ before you - !"

But as he was speaking, there suddenly came a tiny, just noticeable shift of movement from the surface of the table, and both he and Vanellope forgot each other and jerked their heads to look down at it. Their eyes bugged in unison as they saw the Mike's blank features slowly creeping back to life, her eyebrows gradually knitting together and her eyes squinting more tightly shut. They each held their breath in dead silence as she made a single sound deep in her throat, a faint moan half-muted behind her tightly closed lips.

Ralph's jaw dropped, and he abruptly let go of Vanellope's hood. She fell back down to the table and landed straight in Mike's lap with a soft _oof, _but recovered quickly and scrambled up to peer excitedly through the shadows at the slowly waking face, straddling Mike's waist with her knees and pumping her fist with a triumphant cackle.

"HA! _Told _ya!" she cried.

Ralph didn't even glance at her. His eyes were glued to Mike's face, his breath stopped up eagerly in his throat as he leaned forward, hovering barely a foot above her, his heart throbbing anxiously with every fraction of life that slowly, visibly flowed back into her. The sides of his and Vanellope's faces touched as they both stared unblinkingly down, unintentionally competing for the space directly over her. She made another semi-conscious noise and slowly turned her head an inch to one side, her face contorting as if she were being dragged unwillingly out of a pleasant dream.

_"Come on, Mike . . . . " _Ralph muttered through clenched teeth, just barely audible under his breath. _"You can do it, come ooooon . . . "_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The next thing Mike became consciously aware of after collapsing on the floor in front of the Fix-It Felix Jr. game portal was a faint, garbled sound just barely piercing through the dense fog clouding around her mind, reaching her like the indecipherable echo of a far distant cry.

_"Hhhhmuuy? . . . . . Hhhuan a eeer hmmee? Hhmyge. HHMIGE._ MMAGE AHB, Hmige!"

The sound ceased for a moment, dropping her briefly back down into the warm, comfortable silence of her void . . . then, all of a sudden, she was wrenched back up toward the surface of consciousness by a strange, jarring sensation . . . something unknown grasping her and shaking her until the blackness all around her was abruptly replaced by sporadic flashes of light and memory, drawing her forcibly out of her internal slumber towards the brim of waking. Sound penetrated sharply back into the dissipating fog, this time immediate and clear as the clang of a high-pitched bell.

_". . . . OOU ALIVE IN THERE? COME ON, CHICKADEE, RISE AND SHINE! TIME TO WAKE UP!"_

The shaking and the piercing voice stopped in unison as quickly as they'd begun, but they had already jolted her too severely for her to be able to drift back down into the darkness. Tangible sensation began to creep back into the extremities of her body, starting at her toes and melting slowly upward until at last the warmth reached her head, and all at once she was awake, abruptly aware of the semi-transparent darkness of her own closed eyelids and the hard press of something flat and solid that she was lying on. There was also a small, strange weight resting lightly somewhere over her middle, heavy enough to make her muscles constrict faintly, but not enough to bother her breathing.

Two voices sounded back and forth a few times more, but she was now too concentrated on the startling sensation of being awake to listen to what they were saying. With a final, lurching stumble into the cold realm of consciousness, Mike blearily cracked open her eyes, her blurred vision slowly melting into focus.

She looked up . . . . and a pair of the biggest hazel eyes she had ever seen blinked back at her through the strained, shadowy dimness of the air between them.

"Hey! She's _awake!" _a shrill, elated voice rang out sharply from somewhere so near to her, she could feel its vibrations in the air.

Her eyes bugging with shock, Mike opened her mouth and screamed.

The enormous eyes reeled back away from her in surprise, and as the small weight pressing on her middle shuffled back along with them, she realized that they belonged to a round, pink little face, and that the face belonged to the most bizarrely proportioned little humanoid creature she had ever seen.

Gasping sharply in alarm, Mike sat bolt upright and reflexively shoved the diminutive gremlin out of her lap with both hands. It fell back to the far end of the table they were both sitting on, shaking its head and narrowing her eyes at Mike with a startled, slightly affronted expression. Mike tried to scramble backwards away from it, only to bump into a large, fleshy object blocking her way from behind. She let out another high-pitched, frightened yelp and whirled around . . . . then clapped one hand over her wildly pounding heart and froze, her mouth opening in a silent combination of joy and disbelief to discover that the thing blocking her from the edge of the table was Ralph's hand, and that Ralph himself was standing beside her, staring down with a flustered, yet simultaneously relieved look in his eyes.

"Mike! You're awake!" he blurted in astonishment, holding out both hands in the air as a broad smile erased the uncertainty from his face.

"_Ralph!" _she cried out gratefully, half crouching to her feet and then pushing off the surface of the table to throw herself at his chest, her arms latching around his neck as he caught her and stumbled one step backward. She squeezed him tightly, breathing in the familiarly comforting, musty smell of his hair and clothes for a few seconds before leaning back to look him in the face, still hanging off of him like a necktie with her feet dangling in the air.

"You didn't come! I waited for hours, and when . . . when you didn't _come_, I . . . I just got so worried that I went through the tunnel to try and find you, and then I was in this in_cred_ible place with all these doors and lights, and . . . and I went through a gate and read some signs and all of a sudden everything started _flashing,_ and there was all this _noise, _and then this blue woman came out of nowhere and she . . . she . . . and, I . . . . I . . . ."

Mike paused, her rapid stream of explanation abruptly tapering off involuntarily. All of a sudden, the memories of images and sounds and sensations that had been stamped so vividly in her mind only a split-second earlier had become inexplicably foggy, the edges blurring further and further until all at once she discovered that she couldn't recognize them at all. The razor sharp recollections she had been one breath away from elucidating had abruptly vanished, the words snatched right out of her mouth by some intangible, unknown entity before she could even form them. She froze there silently for one long, jolted moment, her brain blanking like cleaned slate.

Ralph blinked, his face just inches away, watching her with a confused frown.

"Er . . . . Mike? Are . . . you sure you're okay?"

She shook herself bluntly and looked back at him, her eyes wide and disoriented.

"_Ralph. . . it just happened again!"_ she whispered, her thoughts staggering in shock and fumbling to realign themselves. "I . . . I can't _remember . . . !"_

He raised his eyebrows in alarm, but before he could open his mouth to answer they both flinched and jerked their heads back to look at the dining table as they were interrupted by the sound of someone loudly, deliberately clearing their throat.

The little creature with the preposterously large head was standing on the tabletop, its eyes flashing at them in an annoyed glare through the swiftly darkening shadows. It was almost too dark for Mike to still make out the posture of the strange little person, but she could hear the impatient tapping of its foot on the table.

"Yeah, ah, _listen . . ." _an irritated voice that was somehow high-pitched, but raspy and throaty at the same time, cut through the stillness of the room, " . . . I hate to interrupt your sappy _reunion_ and all, but if it's not too much trouble . . . could _one _of you, PLEASE, _turn on the lights?"_

Abruptly forgetting all about her jarring, second lapse of memory, Mike slowly loosened her grasp on Ralph's neck and slid back down to the floor, her bare feet padding softly on the wood as she turned around to face the glowering eyes with a curious, but uneasy wince.

"Uh . . . um, _yeah . . . _sure . . . s-sorry," she stammered blankly. She raised her hands in the air and clapped them twice, and every light in the room responsively flickered on, the sudden intensity of the golden glow making each of them cringe and blink for a few seconds. When she opened her eyes again and got her first real look at the little person standing on her dining table, every trace of the uncertainty knotting inside her melted away, and instead she found herself gasping and raising both hands to her heart as she was instantly filled with a warm, bubbly sensation she had never fully experienced before . . . the closest thing she could relate it to was the elated feeling she got whenever a particularly small child smiled at her while playing her game.

The figure standing on the table, wearing an aggravated frown with her tiny hands planted firmly on her hips, was a _little girl_ . . . a little girl with dark, straight hair that fell messily around her shoulders, and was full of brightly colored bits of what Mike's delayed faculties of recognition momentarily identified as _candy, _something she'd never seen before. The girl had a cherub-esque, heart-shaped face dotted in the center with a tiny pink nose that crinkled slightly beneath her enormous, unappreciatively narrowed eyes.

They stared at each other in silence for only a few seconds before Mike hunched her shoulders and let out a suppressed, involuntary squeal of enchantment.

The girl's scowl blinked into a quirk of surprise, her hands easing down to her sides.

"Ralph . . . . _why _is she looking at me like that?"

"Oh! Uh . . . right, my bad!" Ralph started lightly and shuffled around to stand beside the table, but Mike barely noticed him. He cleared his throat in preparation and straightened up, turning to the little girl and gesturing with one hand. He was obviously trying to sound calm and genteel as he spoke, but there was an unmistakable hint of awkward nervousness in his voice. "_Vanellope,_ I'd like to _officially _introduce you to the main . . . er, I guess . . . _solo _character of Masterwork, Miss _Michelangela . . . _or . . . you know, _Mike."_

The little girl eyed her dubiously for another few seconds . . . then slowly quirked one corner of her mouth in a funny, curious smile, waving awkwardly with her tiny fingers.

"Right. Well, uh . . . . _hi, there . . . . _Mike."

Mike felt instantly as if her heart had melted. She opened her mouth into a little _o_ and her eyes softened in an adoring gaze.

"Mike . . . . " Ralph continued, turning to look at her. " . . . I'd like you to meet somebody very special to me. This is my best friend in the world . . . . _Vanellope Von_ -"

But before he could finish, Mike was suddenly unable suppress the urge welling up in her chest and arms a second longer. Giving in to the well of warmth bubbling over inside and letting out a tiny squeak of rapture, she sprang forward with her hands outstretched and swept the little girl off the table in a crushing, full-armed embrace, hugging her inescapably to her chest and swaying her ever so lightly back and forth. The girl yelped once in alarm and then fell into a dazed silence as she was pinned helplessly with her cheek squashed over Mike's heart.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

" . . . _Schweetz?"_ Ralph finished hollowly after a few dumbfounded seconds, his eyes widening and his hand hanging stunned in mid-air.

Mike was apparently too overwhelmed with glee to notice either of their shocked reactions. She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her cheek gently on the downy, mussed crown of Vanellope's flyaway hair, squeezing her tighter and bouncing once on her toes, turning around in a giddy little circle.

"Ralph, she's . . . she's _BEAUTIFUL! _She's the most adorable thing I've ever _seen! _She's like the children who play my game, only . . . only I can _touch _her, I can _talk _to her! Oh, _Ralph, _I've . . . I've _so_ wanted to be able to talk to a child . . . to _really _talk to one, just once_, _ever since I found out they ex_isted_, and now I . . . I . . . oooh, look at her! I just want to _squeeze her!" _she gave Vanellope one last crushing hug, then grasped her firmly with both hands around her waist and held her up at eye-level, making affectionate noises and leaning their foreheads together.

Vanellope stared back at Mike with a dumb, utterly flabbergasted expression.

"You . . . . you _are _squeezing me," she said blankly after a few seconds.

Ralph was beside himself. He wasn't sure whether the veritable firestorm of warm fuzziness unfolding in front of him was the most heartwarming thing he'd ever seen, or the most hilarious . . . but either way, his shoulders were shaking uncontrollably and he had to ball one hand into a fist and clamp it over his mouth to keep from exploding with laughter.

Oblivious to his choked sniggering, Mike only squealed in delight and bounced again, scrunching her face and almost touching the tip of Vanellope's nose with her own.

"Aren't you just the _sweetest, _most _wonderful little - _"

"ALRIGHT, that's _it!" _Vanellope interrupted her, growling in humiliation as she wriggled violently out of Mike's grip and dropped down to the floor, her face glowing bright red. Ralph failed to stifle a blunt snort of hilarity, and Vanellope whipped her head over her shoulder to pin him with an icy death glare. Ralph simply shrugged at her, grinning and chuckling openly.

Wholly undeterred in her enchantment, Mike bent forward and crouched down to Vanellope's eye level, beaming happily at her and resting her hands on her knees.

"Vanellope Von _Schweetz, _you said? I love it! What a charming name that is!"

"_Listen, _sister!" Vanellope snapped fiercely, ignoring the compliment and jabbing one finger in the air at Mike's nose. "You're _new _to this place, so I'm gonna cut you a break and let that little outburst slide . . . this _once. _But let me make one thing _crystal candy clear _to you, _right _now, Big-Hair . . . . just because I'm programmed to be small and cute, doesn't make me a _baby._ I am the _President _of my _game, _I'll have you know, and I have more responsibilities in one _day _than you'll have your entire _life _in this one-man _oil painting . . . _so don't go thinking you can treat me like some stuffed animal, just because you and my best friend happen to be making _GOO-GOO eyes_ at each other! You _g__ot that, chickadee_?"

She finished her tirade slightly out of breath, wisps of her dark hair falling in her eyes and her accusing finger still pointed squarely between Mike's eyes, her other hand clenched in a tiny fist at her side. Mike was leaning back on her haunches, watching her blankly with a wide, slightly cross-eyed stare. Ralph's grin had vanished, replaced with a slack-jawed, horrified gape. He struggled to find his voice for a few mortified seconds, his eyes narrowing incredulously at Vanellope's back.

"Va . . . Va_nellope, _you . . . you . . . !"

But then, before he could sputter out the indignant words sticking in his throat, Mike had turned to look up at him, silencing him with the gentle, slow spread of a jubilant smile brightening her face.

"Ralph?" she said quietly, squeezing her shoulders together in excitement and gesturing toward Vanellope. " . . . . she . . . . is . . . . a_mazing!"_

Both Ralph and Vanellope's face blanked in deadpan silence. Vanellope's pointing arm flopped back down to her side and she stood up straight, blinking in genuine astonishment.

"I . . . am?"

Mike simply beamed at her, extending her hand out eagerly.

"Mike. _Thrilled _to meet you, Vanellope Von Schweetz."

Vanellope blinked again, taken aback by the bald sincerity of the gesture . . . then, with a still faintly confused smile quirking her mouth, she slowly reached out and took Mike's hand, shaking it gingerly.

"Well . . . er . . . . it's, ah . . . nice, to meet you _too_ . . . Mike," she murmured sheepishly. "And, uh . . . you can just call me Vanellope."

Mike grinned happily, and Vanellope shot a half questioning, half apologetic glance over her shoulder at Ralph, who had been watching the exchange metamorphose with a small, almost disbelieving smile and a flutter of warmth kindling larger and larger in his heart.

"_Cripes,"_ Vanellope muttered under her breath, grimacing and squinting one eye at him. "Now I feel _really _bad about Calhoun almost vaporizing her with that _laser . . . "_

Mike's grin vanished.

"About . . . _who, _almost . . . _what, now?" _she asked quietly, her eyes suddenly lighting up with a flash of recognition.

Ralph cringed lightly, rubbing the back of his neck and tilting his gaze up toward the corner of the room.

"_Ahhh, _yeah, . . . Mike . . . " he mumbled reluctantly under his breath. "About, ah . . . about _that . . ." _

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Almost thirty minutes later, the last few lingering rays of the sunset had long since been extinguished over the cusp of the horizon, and the windows of Mike's kitchen looked out into near pitch blackness. The winds had begun to pick up, sporadic gusts gently creaking the walls and rattling the panes of glass every few minutes.

Underneath the warm, comforting glow of the hanging lamp, Ralph, Mike, and Vanellope sat slouching at the dining table, exchanging quizzical glances with one another as they each mulled privately over the mysterious events of the evening.

After a minute or so of marked silence, Ralph ran one hand over his face and breathed a long, weary exhale, tilting his eyes toward Mike and resting his chin perplexedly in his palm.

"So . . . you're _sure_you can't remember anything else?" he inquired gently for the umpteenth time throughout the past half hour.

Mike sighed, slumping her shoulders and blowing a rogue strand of hair out of her forehead in frustration.

"It's just like I _told _you . . . . I went through the tunnel, I came out in Game Center - "

"Game _Central," _Vanellope corrected blandly.

Mike shot her a quick, affectionate glance, the same glance she'd seemed unable to resist pointing in her direction every time Vanellope so much as opened her mouth. Over the past couple days, Ralph had been steadily growing more than a little anxious about the inevitable moment when the two would first meet . . . . all he'd been hoping for was that Mike wouldn't be _too frightened_ of his sometimes abrasive little sweet-and-sour sidekick. Had he known beforehand what kind of an impression Vanellope would _actually_ make on her, he might have even considered the kid's offer to come along on their first real date. In spite of all the chaos and anxiety the evening had thrown at them, it still made his heart beat faster with a private little thrill of happiness every time he noticed Mike's obvious signs of adoration for his friend.

" - right, Game _Central _Station . . . I came out, I know I started looking around for the entrance to Fix-It Felix Jr., and then . . . . then, there's just . . . . _nothing. _It's like . . . like there's a _piece _missing, a big hole where pictures and sounds should be. The last thing I remember is almost getting hit by that . . . . _laser? . . . . _and then . . . I saw _you," _she turned to look at Ralph, her eyes pinning him with the same green flash as that horrible, surreal moment, and the recollection was almost enough to make him shudder. Mike shrugged, holding her hands up. "And then . . . more _nothing. _Next thing I knew, I was waking up here."

Vanellope frowned, folding her arms on the table and resting her head wearily on them.

"And this whole . . . _memory loss, _thing . . . . you say this has happened be_fore?" _she drawled skeptically.

Ralph shot a stern, unappreciative look at the rude undertone of her voice, but Mike only nodded wistfully, appearing not to notice.

"Yeah. Once before."

Ralph's brow softened as he remembered the first time he had seen Michelangela's glitch randomly delete a segment of her memory before his eyes. He shook himself lightly and forced his thoughts elsewhere.

"Before your gli . . . er . . . I mean . . . before you, _forgot . . . _you said something about a blue woman, and flashes and loud noises in the station," Ralph muttered pensively. "You're _positive _none of that rings a bell anymore?"

Mike shook her head sadly.

Vanellope suddenly sat up straight, a cognitive spark twinkling visibly behind her eyes.

"Mike must have gone into the station just a few seconds after the firewalls were disabled," she thought aloud, darting her gaze toward Ralph. "That's why the alarms were going off, and that's why the SP program coordinator showed up."

"Maybe . . . but if she came out when the walls went down, then why wasn't she still there when Calhoun practically blasted the place apart?" he pointed out dubiously.

Vanellope shrugged and flattened her brow irately.

"I don't know, you tell _me, _smarty-pants. I'm just saying, if there was a _blue woman _there_, _then it obviously had to be ol' Lockdown Loudmouth. Maybe she took off into one of the games to investigate . . . . _or . . . . " _Vanellope paused, her demeanor suddenly shifting and her eyes widening with a glint of worry. " . . . . maybe . . . . whatever took down the firewalls got to _her, _too."

Ralph started briefly at the perturbing, but undeniable logic of the idea . . . but he quickly shook it off and shot Vanellope a silencing look, tilting his eyes furtively toward Mike and shaking his head discretely.

_The absolute __**last **__thing he wanted was for Mike to find out that there were rumors of a virus lurking somewhere around the arcade . . . . on top of everything else she'd been through that night, he was beginning to get the uneasy feeling that he'd be lucky if he could ever convince her to leave her game again._

There was a moment of a weighted silence, each of them looking down sullenly at the tabletop and shifting in their chairs. Mike chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully for a few seconds, then looked up again, her voice lifting with a forced note of timid optimism.

"But . . . . this lockdown thing, and these _firewalls _you guys are talking about_. . . _you _did_ say that they were gone now, right?"

Ralph and Vanellope exchanged uncomfortable glances.

"Well, it's . . . it's hard to say for sure," Ralph muttered lamely, trying to think of the best way to explain their predicament without causing her unnecessary anxiety. "The alarm _said _they were down, and that they couldn't be turned back on, but that doesn't mean anything for sure until we . . . we . . . . "

Ralph stopped suddenly, his voice trailing off as a heavy weight of realization dropped into the bottom of his stomach like a rock. He jerked upright in the chair and darted his gaze frantically toward the cuckoo clock on the wall, widening his eyes in alarm when he saw what time it was and bolting to his feet so sharply he knocked his chair flat on the floor. Mike and Vanellope jumped in unison.

"_Geez, _Ralph!" Vanellope snapped in an annoyed, jostled tone. "What's _wrong?"_

"The _time!" _he cried back incredulously. "We've been _sitting _here for . . . . Vanellope, we were supposed to meet Calhoun and Felix back in the station ten minutes ago! What if they locked the gates again!?"

Vanellope's scowl dropped immediately into a panicked gape.

_"What? _You big _dunder_head, why didn't you keep an eye on what _time it was?"_

"_ME?_ You could have . . . . aagghh, for_get _it, we gotta _go, kid!"_

Without waiting for her to answer, Ralph grabbed Vanellope out of her chair with one hand and whirled around to make a break for the door . . . . then abruptly remembered Mike, nearly running straight into her. She had risen slowly from the table and taken a few shaky stesp back, her confused, startled gaze darting back and forth between the two of them as they yelled at each other. His heart torn savagely between the pressing urgency of getting back to the station and his aching reticence at leaving Mike behind with that frightened look on her face, Ralph stood rooted to the spot for a few agonizing seconds with Vanellope scrambling up onto his shoulder on one side, and Mike's baffled, anxious eyes penetrating into him on the other.

"Ralph, what are you . . . . what's going on?" she stammered hollowly.

Suddenly the little bird on the cuckoo clock burst out on its extending perch, chirping with inappropriate cheerfulness and puncturing any lingering hesitation. Puckering his brow in a remorseful, apologetic grimace, Ralph reached out his free hand and wrapped it around Mike's slim shoulders, squeezing her gently with as much reassuring warmth as he could summon.

"Mike, I . . . I'm sorry, but we have to go, _now. _It's my fault for not explaining sooner . . . there's just no time now, we have to get back. But I _promise . . . _Mike? _Look at me." _He tilted her head up gently to look him in the eye, running the pad of his thumb just once, gently, over her cheek and sliding her hair behind her ear. " . . . I promise you I'll come back tomorrow night, just as soon as I possibly can. Okay? I _promise."_

Still looking faintly hurt and confused, but clearly understanding the urgency in his tone, Mike pursed her lips and nodded.

Afraid that if he waited another second he would lose his resolve to leave altogether, Ralph nodded once firmly in reply and bolted to the door with Vanellope in tow, wrenching it open and hurriedly sucking his gut in to squeeze through. He and Vanellope burst out into the chilly night air of Masterwork, the sky and everything around them absolutely dark, save for the faint, pale glow provided by the moonless, starlit sky. With the wind whipping erratically at his hair and clothes, Ralph held Vanellope securely onto his shoulder with one hand and took off determinedly down the path, making his way back to the tunnels as much by feel as by sight.

Behind them, Mike had moved to stand in the open, brightly-lit doorway and watch them as they shrank into the night, her worried gaze and wringing hands hidden in her dark silhouette.

With her fingers tightening in the fabric of his shirt as he ran and her hair streaming back in the wind, Vanellope craned her neck over her shoulder and cupped one hand beside her mouth to shout back in the direction of the house, her shrill voice ringing almost painfully in Ralph's ear.

_"I'M GLAD I FINALLY GOT TO MEET YOU, CHICKADEE! I'LL SEE YOU AGAIN SOON!"_

In spite of himself, and in spite of the fraught tension of the moment as he chugged forward along the almost invisible pathway, breathing hard . . . . Ralph couldn't help smiling.

There was a short pause, and then, almost too faint and far away for him to make out, but not _quite . . . _he heard Mike's voice, straining to reach them over the rapidly stretching distance.

_"Please . . . . please don't forget to come back," _it called out softly, almost lost in a gust of rising wind.

His smile straightened.

When they reached the tunnel on the left a moment later, Ralph paused for a few seconds to catchhis breath. While he was hunched over, Vanellope turned absently to take a final look back at Mike's house . . . and jumped, her hands fisting tighter in the shoulder of his shirt.

"Her house!" she cried in surprise. "Ralph, it just . . . . Mike's house disappeared, just like you said!"

Still panting lightly, Ralph peered back in the direction they had just come and squinted his eyes along the dimly starlit horizon. The golden light from the first-story windows was gone, leaving behind nothing but empty coastline. Ralph flattened his brow into a firm line and nodded, turning and slipping into the mouth of the tunnel with a small sigh.

"We'll _talk about it later_," he muttered lowly, shifting Vanellope up higher on his shoulder as the two of them pressed forward into the darkness, not knowing what would await them at the end.


	24. Chapter 23: Friendly Intervention

A/N: I apologize for the shortness of this chapter . . . . I wanted to get up to speed with the plot and fire this one off quickly, because the bad news is that the next update may take a fair bit longer than the last few. The good news, however, is that that is because the next chapter is going to be significantly longer than the last few, as well . . . . and, if I may say so myself, I do anticipate that it will be well worth the wait ;)

Enjoy! Reviews make me smile!

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 23: Friendly Intervention_

As Ralph and Vanellope stepped out of the Masterwork tunnel and into the light of the anteroom, they each burst out in a loud, simultaneous exhale of relief when they heard the familiar, unmistakable hubbub of a station filled with mingling characters.

"Oh, sweet merciful _Sega . . . " _Ralph gasped, stopping just before the platform and leaning against the wall of the tunnel opening with one hand as he panted to catch his breath. He had run practically the entire length of the Masterwork tunnel as quickly as the darkness and banking corners would allow, all the while with Vanellope perched on his shoulder and anxiously fisting her hands tighter and tighter in his hair. As soon as it became clear that the firewalls were still deactivated and that there was some level of activity happening in the station, Vanellope let out a relieved whoop of excitement and jumped down to the floor, scurrying to the bottom of the short platform staircase and motioning for Ralph to follow her.

"Come on, wheezy, no time to rest now! We've gotta go find the Fix-Its!"

Wiping a few nervous beds of perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand, Ralph shook his head and drew in a few more deep, calming breaths as he lumbered down after her.

"Thank _goodness _the gates are still open," he mumbled wearily as he caught up to Vanellope and the two of them trotted toward the archway. "I don't know how much more of this lockdown garbage I can take . . . "

As if responding to his remark on cue, however, a small alarm sounded briefly and a familiar blue figure blipped up through the floor and turned to address them the second he and Vanellope stepped over the Masterwork threshold and into the station.

"Pardon me, folks," the surge protector interjected politely, glancing up at them from her clipboard. "I'm afraid I can't let you through just yet."

Ralph leaned his head back and groaned miserably, and Vanellope shot him a scathing look.

"You _had _to jinx it, didn't you?" she snapped . . . then, her demeanor quickly changed as an abrupt realization visibly occurred to her. Her eyes lit up as she whirled to face the surge protector - a younger-looking, rookie officer with her pale blue hair tied back in an officious knot. "But . . . _wait a minute . . . . _you, you're a . . . the SPs! You guys are back? You're all o_kay?"_

The surge protector started lightly, then cleared her throat and answered in a drone of forced professionalism.

"I, ah . . . I am not currently at liberty to issue an official statement on that, er . . . . young lady."

Ralph jerked his head back down to look at her, his eyes widening hopefully and his voice mimicking Vanellope's optimistic tone.

"But she's right . . . you're _here, _and the firewalls are still down! Everything must be back to normal now, right?"

The SP blipped nervously for a second, then quickly narrowed her eyes in a business-like frown.

"Sir, I'm _sorry, _but I'm afraid I must refer all questions to our information desk at this time. Now, ah, as I was _saying . . . _I can't let you through, until you've been properly debriefed of the station's current situation. It's a policy temporarily in effect for your safety and convenience."

The SP paused to flip a page on her clipboard, and Vanellope blew a short raspberry through her lips and snickered.

"Lady, I don't want to tell you how to do your _job_ . . . " she muttered jokingly, jerking her head towards Ralph and elbowing him in the side of the leg. " . . . but if you're talking about _debriefing _my friend here, I don't think either of the words 'safe' or 'convenient' are _quite_ the descriptors you'd want to use."

The surge protector blinked quizzically, and Ralph shot Vanellope an evil glare and prodded her sharply with his finger.

"Enough from the _peanut gallery_," he growled. "You _know _what she means."

The surge protector shook herself bluntly and regained her focus, scanning her eyes slightly bashfully over her papers.

"Um . . . right, well . . . yes. At this time, it is my duty to inform you that the lockdown _has _been terminated, and that the official status of Game Central Station is _open."_

_"Yesss!" _Vanellope hissed. She spun in one elated circle, and she Ralph exchanged a triumphant fist-bump.

_"However," _the SP continued, silencing them with a firm glance over her clipboard. "Due to the suspicious circumstances of certain recent . . . _occurrences . . . _we _are _asking that all characters please try to limit their inter-game travel to the absolute minimum. We are currently investigating into the cause of the disturbances, and an official statement will be made _if _and _when _anything is discovered that may portend to the arcade community as a whole. Have a nice day, and stay _safe, _please."

The surge protector finished her mandatory speech, then gave them a curt nod and vanished into the floor. Ralph cast a quick glance around the station and noticed similar exchanges happening at the other gates as well, numerous characters waiting impatiently at the game portals while the blue security programs fed them the same report.

Vanellope _hmphed _and crossed her arms in dissatisfaction.

"Well, that sure answered all of _my _questions," she grumbled sarcastically.

Ralph sighed and began traipsing back toward the center resting area near Fix-It Felix Jr., Vanellope following at his side.

"Let's just be grateful the station is open again," he muttered wearily. _"And _that the regular surge protectors are back on duty."

"Yeah, I _guess _so . . . . but don't you get the feeling they're still an _awful lot _they're not telling us?" Vanellope pressed. "Like . . . what knocked them all out of commission in the first place, and how are they all magically back on their feet all of a sudden? Why won't they say what happened to the firewalls? . . . and what about the Program Coordinator? If Mike really did run into her just after the system went down, then where is she _now? _Why isn't _she _out here telling us what's up?"

Ralph shrugged and gave Vanellope a tired look.

_"Listen, _kid . . . right now, the only thing I care about is finding Felix and Calhoun, making sure Hero's Duty is still in one piece, and then going home to get some _sleep. _I've had about as much as excitement as my blood pressure can _handle_ in one night."

Vanellope rolled her eyes and frowned thoughtfully, but didn't say anything.

As soon as they came within earshot of the waiting area outside Fix-It Felix Jr., Ralph heard a sharp whistle and looked up to see his protagonist jumping to his feet on a bench and waving them enthusiastically over. Calhoun was slumped on the seat next to him, minus a plasma cannon but still dressed in her off-duty sweats and tank top, and looking thoroughly worn out and aggravated. Taking her semi-relaxed posture as a good sign, Ralph heaved another small sigh of relief as he and Vanellope drew near to the waiting couple. Calhoun sat up straighter and gave them an annoyed look.

"About _time," _she growled only half-heartedly, apparently too exhausted to be genuinely angry with them. "What _took _you, Wreck-It? You have to give the girl emergency resuscitation or something?"

Vanellope suppressed a giggle, but Ralph - almost too tired to be embarrassed anymore - only rolled his eyes.

"Mike's _fine, _thanks for asking," he muttered sarcastically. "We meant to be back in an hour, we just got a little . . . . distracted. How about you? I take it your _platoon _didn't need any 'resuscitating'?"

Calhoun _huffed _irately and looked away. Felix rubbed her comfortingly on the shoulder and glanced explanatorily to Ralph and Vanellope.

"Hero's Duty is doing just fine, _thank goodness. _They were, understandably, quite rattled from being put out of order . . . . but Tammy managed to calm them down. As long as she's there first thing in the morning, they're going to be A-okay."

Ralph nodded. "Well . . . that's good to hear," he said sincerely, his gaze lingering briefly on Calhoun's turned-away face, her bangs hiding most of her expression from view. He narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, subconsciously waiting for . . . . he wasn't sure just what.

"What about all _this?" _Vanellope gestured around her to the station milling with characters and surge protectors. "What happened after we left, Felix?"

The superintendent shrugged with a regretful frown. "Nothing that explains very much, I'm afraid. After you two made it safely into that young lady's game, I got right to work repairing the wall . . . but I hadn't gotten three hammers in before I heard voices coming from the other end of the station. I looked up, and it was the _surge protectors . . . . _almost _all _of them, like they'd all just popped up at the same time! I explained to them what happened, and they agreed to let me wait in the station after I finished fixing the wall, so I _did . . . . _but then, everything just sort of went back to business as usual. Characters gradually started to find out that the walls were down, and when traffic picked up the SPs just went back to work like nothing happened."

"They weren't upset about Calhoun's little . . . _misfire?" _Ralph tried to phrase the question delicately.

Felix shook his head. "After I fixed the wall, they didn't even ask me any more _questions _about it. I think they're too busying trying to figure out what happened to the firewalls in the first place."

Vanellope looked down at the floor and pursed her lips, stuffing her hands grudgingly in the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

"I don't like it," she muttered. "I _know _they're hiding something from us."

Ralph glanced furtively back and forth between the matching, worried frowns of his two friends, then sighed and deliberately dismissed the problem from his mind, stretching his shoulders and grunting wearily.

"Listen . . . I don't know about the three of you, but I'm ready to call it quits on this whole rotten day. I'm going home, and going to _bed_. And Van_ellope . . . ?" _he hardened his tone bluntly and looked down at her. ". . . no tagging along. You're going to your _own game_tonight, got it?'

Vanellope, to his slight suspicion, simply closed her eyes and smiled agreeably, her dark demeanor flipping like a switch as she nodded without the faintest hint of protest.

"Sure thing. Whatever you say, boss."

Hooking one eyebrow distrustfully at the unusual sweetness of her tone . . . but too bone tired to really give it any serious thought . . . Ralph turned and trudged toward Fix-It Felix Jr., his feet dragging heavily on the linoleum.

"Get some rest, brother! I'll see you in the morning!" he heard Felix call thoughtfully from behind. He held up one hand without looking back and waved half-heartedly over his shoulder in recognition.

"Yeah . . . sweet dreams, Casanova!" Vanellope added brightly.

Ralph just shook his head wearily and passed through the Fix-It Felix gate, making it through mercifully unmolested by station security. He clambered silently into the last car of the blue train, noticing with a slight wince that it was still banged-up and dented from its frenzied bullet ride earlier that night. He sat down, and after a couple seconds of struggling the train lurched forward with a rattling creak, chugging dutifully along into the tunnel like a wounded soldier still marching stubbornly forward. The train bumped and jolted sharply as it rolled over the just-barely traversable sections of track that Ralph had torn up with the heels of his feet . . . . he sighed and massaged his eyes with his fingertips as the cars bounced jerkily over a particularly large dent in the rails.

_Yes . . . it was definitely time to call this day quits._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Felix watched the hulking, slumped figure of his protagonist dragging his feet across the station toward their game entrance with a sympathetic sigh. It had been a turbulent night for all of them, without a doubt . . . but Ralph seemed to have taken the brunt of the chaos harder than any of them, even harder than his wife. Tamora was like a stainless steel girder; no matter what kind of pressure she was up against . . . even the impending danger of having her game unplugged and losing all of her men . . . she would find a way to bear up under it. She might warp and tremble for a while under the most extreme burdens . . . but in the end, she would always flex back, straightening out and holding up any weight life could heap on her as strongly as ever.

_Ralph, on the other hand_ . . . .

As soon as their prodigious friend had disappeared through the Fix-It Felix Jr. portal, Vanellope surprised them both by immediately whirling around and pinning them with an intense, penetrating stare, her big eyes flashing energetically and a somewhat devious grin spreading across her face.

"Okay, he's _gone," _she hissed excitedly. "Now, I need you two to _listen up."_

Felix and Tamora exchanged startled, quizzical glances, then looked back at the eager-faced little pixie with wild strands of hair falling unnoticed over her face.

"I know that look," Tammy muttered gruffly and leaned further forward on the bench. "What half-baked scheme are you cooking up _now, _sugar cube?"

Vanellope's smile only widened smugly.

"Half-baked, _nothing . . . _this one is so baked, it's catching fire," she paused for effect, a mischievous twinkle gleaming across her eyes. "And besides . . . I wouldn't really call it a _scheme, _so much as . . . . . . a little _friendly intervention." _

Felix gave his wife another nonplussed sideways glance, then slid off of the bench and crouched down beside Vanellope. Tamora followed suit and hunched over to bring their heads together in a triangular huddle.

"And in _what, _might I ask, did you have a mind for us to intervene?" Felix murmured skeptically.

Vanellope took a deep breath and let it out slowly, holding her hands out as if gesturing to pieces on an invisible chess board.

"Okay, Fix-Its. I'm gonna level with you. I just had the privilege of meeting Ralph's fainting little flower for _myself, _and I have to tell ya . . . . she's not exactly painting with a _full palette. _I mean, she's a sweet kid and all, but . . . she's loopy as a fruit-bat. And it isn't just because of her glitch, or what_ever _it is she's got . . . it's because she's a _shut-in. _She's only been plugged in five days, but she's _terrified _of anything outside of her game. She only came into the station in the first place because Ralph didn't show up in Masterwork tonight, and after Calhoun nearly blasting her head off, it'll be a miracle if she's even willing to do _that _again!"

Tamora flinched just slightly and narrowed her eyes, muttering sheepishly under her breath.

"Get to the _point, _princess."

"My _point, _is . . . . if we leave things up to _Ralph, _he's just gonna end up babysitting this nutcase inside her game every night for the rest of his _life. _He's too big a softie to give Mike the _push _she needs to get over her agoraphobia . . . so, naturally, as his best friends . . . that's where _we come in."_

The instant she uttered those words, Felix felt a distinctive knot of apprehension tightening him up inside. He made a slight grimace and took off his cap, scratching the side of his head uncertainly.

"_Gee, _Vanellope . . . I . . . I just don't know if that's really the _best _idea. Wouldn't it be better just to . . . you know, let their relationship move forward naturally? At its own pace?"

"Yeah . . . let's not forget what happened the _last _time you tried to take charge of Ham Hands' love life," Tamora added meaningfully.

Vanellope looked incredulously back and forth between the two of them for a second, then narrowed her eyes with an exasperated groan.

"What are you two, chicken? Come _on, _you guys! This is the first time Ralph's had somebody _special _in his life . . . don't you want to help him not to royally _screw it up_? Don't you want him and Mike to be able to go out and _do _things, like a normal couple?"

There was a moment of pointed silence. Vanellope raised one eyebrow and gave them a sly smile.

"Don't you guys want to _meet her, _and see what all the fuss is about?"

Felix froze, then shot a questioning look at his wife. She was blinking back at him with a similar expression of admitted curiosity.

"It . . . . _might _not hurt to give the kid just _one, _helpful little nudge in the right direction, Felix," Tamora muttered thoughtfully at him. "I mean . . . . I did almost vaporize her skull tonight. I sort of owe her one."

Felix hesitated briefly, something inside of him still protesting vehemently against the idea . . . . but after another moment pinned underneath the dual stares of the two females beside him, he slumped his shoulders in a long exhale and gave up. He rubbed one gloved hand over his eyes and nodded reluctantly, putting his blue cap back and pulling the brim firmly down over his forehead.

"Alright . . . . al_right," _he sighed. "Vanellope . . . . what sort of plan did you have in mind?"


	25. Chapter 24: Go See the World

A/N: Hooray! This update is happening sooner than I'd hoped! Yet again, I just wasn't able to get quite as far with the plot as I wanted, but oh well . . . that's pretty much par for the course with me. Seriously, this story is shaping up to be ridiculously, almost _laughably _long . . . . like, so long that I worry about people just plain getting sick of waiting for it get on with itself already.

On that note, however, I want to take this opportunity ( it being technically the 25th chapter, and also having just broken 300 reviews, two milestones in my mind ) to stop and tell all of you how sincerely thankful I am for your continuing support of this mammoth creature I've spawned. You're all so sweet and funny and delightful in your reviews, and if it weren't for you I absolutely would not have been able to keep up the steam to carry on with this thing. So at the risk of making you gag with my sappiness . . . thank you. Thank you all.

Also, in case y'all are interested, I recently posted some new illustrations for this story on my deviantArt account ( Motorchickensmile ), including the illustration for chapter 17 which is the ( temporary ) new coverart.

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted concepts or characters mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 24: Go See the World_

By the time Fix-It Felix Jr. was on its fourth gamer of the day at about eleven o'clock on Saturday morning, Ralph was beginning to get the distinctive feeling that his protagonist was distracted by something. Four players in, and Felix had already "died" a half dozen times, letting slow-moving bricks that he ought to be dodging without a second thought hit him smack in the forehead as early as the first floor of the apartment.

Being an NPC himself, Ralph had never really had an exact grasp on the enigmatic relationship between Felix and the console joystick. It was true that the gamers had control over his movements the moment after they hit the Start button, but Felix wasn't an absolute puppet . . . . he could break the joystick's invisible hold on him with relative ease when he wanted, and apparently ( as Ralph couldn't help noticing that Saturday morning ) he could also make it lag and stutter if he wasn't giving enough of his attention to the task at hand. After losing the game for a second time less than five minutes in, the fourth player of the day had rolled her eyes and huffed away in disgust.

Ralph waited until the flashing _game over _screen had turned over to the automatic, looping cut scene, then scaled down the side of the building and dropped with a heavy _thud _onto the pavement beside the supine, spread-eagle figure of his protagonist. As the loose bricks and other concrete fragments disappeared around them, blipping back up to reset the apartment building, Ralph leaned over Felix and gave him a concerned look.

"You feelin' alright there, little buddy?"

Felix, who had just _binged _back to life a few seconds earlier, blinked and shook himself, bouncing back to his feet and shooting Ralph a reassuring smile that seemed just a bit _too _enthusiastic.

"Who, _me? _Why, I'm feeling fine! Just dandy! Tip top, rarin' to go!"

Ralph quirked one eyebrow quizzically.

"You sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure! Why, ah . . . why do you ask?" Felix's smile broadened as his voice cracked just slightly.

"I don't know . . . . I just seem to be killing you a little too easily today," Ralph mumbled suspiciously. "Positive something's not bothering you? You want me to wreck a little slower?"

"What? _No, _don't be silly!" Felix insisted, waving his hands with a small, nervous laugh. "I'll be _fine, _I just . . . I must not have gotten enough sleep last night, is all. You know, with . . . with all the excitement in the station? Just give me a few more games to warm up, and I'll be right as rain!"

Without waiting for Ralph to respond, the sheepishly grinning superintendent turned on his heel and _sproinged _away to the opposite end of the game to await the next quarter alert. Ralph narrowed his eyes warily after him for a moment, then shook his head and lumbered back to the dump, his thoughts tumbling pensively over one another.

_Felix wasn't fooling him for a minute. You don't throw bricks at someone every day for thirty years without learning to recognize the pattern of their movements, and he could tell . . . . beyond the shadow of a doubt . . . . that __**something**__ was preventing his good guy from keeping his head in the game that morning._

_The question was . . . what?_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The arcade closed an hour earlier than usual on Saturdays, a fact for which Felix was simultaneously grateful and dismayed on that particular day as he watched Litwak locking up the front doors from his perch atop the Niceland apartment building. The keys jangled briefly against the glass with a faint _klink _of finality, and Felix swallowed down another in a long series of dry knots that had been sticking in his throat all day.

_This was a bad idea. He just knew it._

Heaving a small, reluctant sigh, he straightened the bill on his blue cap and let out his perfunctory call, devoid of its usual cheerfulness.

"Quittin' time!" he chirped out weakly over the side of the building. A few of the Nicelanders waved at him and then shut their windows, and Ralph, who had been hanging around sluggishly at the edge of the dump for the last few hours, jerked slightly and sat up straighter on the pile of bricks he was half sunken into, and Felix realized he had actually fallen asleep there. Felix shook his head guiltily, tugging at the collar of his shirt as he opened the door to the rooftop staircase and made his way down.

It was his fault that Ralph and the others hadn't had anything to do since that afternoon. For as long as he could remember, Felix had always been notoriously bad at deceiving people, and the strain of keeping Vanellope's plans for that night a secret from his antagonist had thrown him so badly off his game that word had actually spread among the players that Fix-It Felix Jr. was acting a little buggy that Saturday . . . . not wanting to risk wasting a quarter, the kids had pointedly avoided their game for the last several hours of the day.

Trying not to dwell on the discomfort of having to act contrarily to his forthright-to-a-fault nature, Felix hurried down to the first floor of the apartment building as quickly as he could, repeatedly muttering a mantra of encouragement to himself as he went.

"It's for Ralph and Mike, it'll _help them . . ._ it's for their own good, it's for their own good, it_ . . . it . . . _" Felix paused with his hand on the knob of the front door, his shoulders drooping and his resolve momentarily deflating. " . . . . it _still _seems like a bad idea to me," he finished glumly, taking a deep breath and opening the door.

As he stepped out onto the front stoop of the apartment building and looked in the direction of the dump, Felix let out a small, anxious yelp and jumped in alarm to see Ralph already halfway to the train station. His small heart leaping up into his throat, Felix clamped one hand over his hat and took off after him at a mad dash, hopping and bounding as fast as his feet could carry him. As he went, he heard Vanellope's instructions from the night before, playing in the back of his mind like a cautionary sound byte . . .

_". . . but whatever happens, guys, your first and most important job is to make SURE that you stall Ralph for as __**long **__as possible," she had commanded he and his wife firmly, signifying the heavy consequence of the charge with repeated downward thrusts of her little hand. "He's going to want to book it to Masterwork the __**minute **__the arcade closes, so you have to cut him off and keep him busy long enough for __**me **__to get there first." _

"RALPH!" Felix called out breathlessly as he caught up to his swiftly trotting bad guy, doing his best to sound casual and leisurely. "Hey, Ralph! . . . . _hey_, ah . . . wait up, brother!"

Ralph stopped just a few paces from the station and turned around, starting faintly in surprise to see Felix skidding to a halt behind him.

"What is it, Felix?" he asked, not unkindly, but with a definite note of impatience in his tone. "I'm kind of in a hurry."

Felix stood there mutely for a few seconds, panting as his brain raced to come up with a good stalling tactic and mentally kicking himself for not thinking to prepare something beforehand. _No doubt about it, misdirection was simply not one of his fortes . . ._

"_Well, _I, uh . . . . I just . . . ah, wanted to catch you before you left, to, ah . . . to . . . apologize to you!" he blurted quickly, seizing on the first idea that popped into his head.

Ralph blinked.

"Apologize for _what?"_

"For, uh . . . for being so out of it today! Yeah, that's it . . . I wanted to apologize for lousing up and driving the gamers away. I'm sure you and the others must have been bored silly for those last few hours."

Ralph shrugged and gave him a small smile.

"Ahhh, don't worry about it. We all have our off days. Just relax and take it easy tomorrow, and I'm sure you'll be a hundred percent again by Monday."

The hulking wrecker turned to leave again, and Felix quickly darted in front of him to stand between him and the station. Ralph halted awkwardly to keep from stepping on him.

"That _sure _is nice of you to say, brother!" Felix blathered, his face plastered with an overly-sweet grin. "I just don't know what got _into _me today . . . . I couldn't focus, couldn't seem to keep my mind on the game, kept drifting off, getting distracted thinking about y -"

Felix froze suddenly, cutting himself off just as he was about to blurt out the very secret that he was supposed to be keeping. Ralph's eyes widened responsively, then he raised one eyebrow in a calm, knowing smile.

"Oh . . . so, you _did _have something particular on your mind, then," he said slyly, folding his hands behind his back and leaning over Felix to accentuate his intimidating size. "What was it, if you don't mind my asking?"

Felix's mind went blank for a moment, a few sparse beads of panic sweat beginning to shine at his temple. He laughed nervously and shifted on his feet, wringing his gloved hands briefly.

"It . . . well, it . . . I guess you could say it was sort of a, uh . . . uh . . . . . uh, s-SAY! Where are you headed off to in such a rush, anyway?"

Ralph narrowed his eyes dully at the abrupt change in subject, obviously not fooled by Felix's cheery demeanor, but too preoccupied to try and press the matter any further.

"I promised Mike I'd check on her as soon as the arcade closed tonight. So . . . if you don't _mind, _I need to get going," he answered, gently moving Felix out of his way with one hand and continuing toward the train station . . . but like a floating bobber refusing to stay pushed underwater, Felix zipped right around his other side and popped back in front of him, trying to ease his sheepish grimace into a normal smile.

"But, ah . . . but it's only six o'clock, Ralph!" he piped up, raising his left arm and pointing to a wristwatch that wasn't there. "It's still early yet . . . and the arcade isn't even open tomorrow! You've got _plenty _of time, what's your hurry?"

Ralph frowned darkly, his patience wearing visibly thin.

"I _said _I'd be there as soon as I could, so that's what I'm going to _do. _Now _please, _Felix . . . if you don't mind . . . ?"

Ralph tried to sidestep around him, but Felix bobbed and leaned left and right, effectively blocking his progress as he continued to blurt out whatever possible tactics for delay popped into his head.

"B-but . . . . but Mike doesn't _know _that the arcade closes early on Saturdays, does she? She's probably not even expecting you yet . . . don't want to seem over-eager now, do you?"

"FELIX," Ralph barked in a loud, blunt voice, finally just picking him up by the scruff of his shirt and lifting him clear off the ground. "I don't know what you're trying to do here, but seriously . . . KNOCK IT OFF. I'm going to see Mike, and I'm going _now, _got it?"

He turned around and dropped Felix back down on the grass behind him just a tad roughly, then stormed off the remaining few paces and clunked heavily up the stairs to the train station platform. His chest seizing sharply, Felix dashed for the station like a lightning bolt, foregoing the stairs and hopping up over the side of landing to jump between Ralph and the train.

"Wait a minute!" he cried desperately, holding his hands up and flinching at the instant jolt of anger darkening Ralph's face. "You . . . you _can't _go yet, because I haven't had a chance to fix the train tracks! They're still all torn up from that rough ride we took last night, remember? And . . . and the train, too! Not safe to go riding on a banged-up train, Ralph!"

The irritation radiating out from him like a tangible heat, Ralph clenched his teeth and gripped Felix's head in his fingertips, spinning him around in a sharp about-face to point him toward the blue train . . . which, Felix saw with a sinking feeling of dismay, had been restored to perfect condition.

"Everything resets at the beginning of each game, Felix, _remember?" _Ralph snapped sharply, letting go of his head. Felix looked over his shoulder, his mouth working silently for a moment as he struggled to think of another excuse.

Ralph narrowed his eyes at Felix in a combination of venom and suspicion as he pushed his way past the hopelessly stumped handyman and squeezed himself ungracefully into the last care of the train.

"You're acting _way _too weird today," Ralph muttered darkly as he waited for the train to rattle to life. "Maybe you should go home and _lie down _or something, pal."

Felix opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He had hit the bottom of his very shallow capacity for deception, and for the life of him couldn't think of another single thing to say to stall Ralph even a minute longer . . . . when suddenly, swooping in on her hover-cruiser through the brick-arch of the Fix-It Felix Jr. like an angel winging out of heaven to save his skin - albeit, an angel wearing bulky, space-age body armor covered in scorch marks - came Tamora, whirling to a stop and hovering behind Ralph just as the old-fashioned train whistle was about to sound from the station. Tamora whipped the bangs from her eyes and quickly scanned the situation, absorbing the details immediately and shooting Felix a reassuring wink just before Ralph turned in his seat to look at her.

"Oh, _great," _he muttered. "Sergeant Slip-shot arrives. I suppose you're having an off day, too?"

Tamora gave him a slightly confused smile, floating down to land her cruiser on the grass beside the train.

"What are you jawing about, Wreck-It?" she answered good-naturedly. "I actually had a pretty _stellar _day, if you're really interested."

"I'm not," Ralph replied bluntly.

"Only _eight _games all day," Tamora continued, ignoring him. Felix watched with a silent transfixed smile, admiring his wife's superior acting skills. "Eight! Can't remember the last Saturday I had that much downtime. Look . . . I've still got a full complement of plasma grenades! Didn't even get high enough in the tower to have to use them!"

As she was talking, Tamora pulled a round, metallic, golf-ball-sized object from a small compartment dispenser on her hip and held it up demonstratively for the two of them to see. Ralph rolled his eyes disinterestedly.

"Well, good for you, sarge. Don't spend 'em all in one place. Now please, if you two will ex_cuse _me, I've got to get g -"

_BLEEP._

Ralph abruptly stopped speaking as a stiff, electronic blip rent the air, both he and Felix jerking to pin Tamora with bug-eyed stares.

Tamora blinked back at them, her own eyes slowly widening as she raised the little round object in her hand up to face level. The grenade was now blinking repeatedly with a tiny green signal light. Tamora shifted her gaze back to them, not even flinching at their horrified expressions.

"Oops," she muttered plainly. Ralph sat paralyzed a second longer, then let out a wild yell and pried himself out of the train car, scrambling up to the station and backing away from Calhoun. Genuinely alarmed as well, Felix mimicked him, holding his arms up as if to shield himself.

"Tammy, what are you _doing!?" _he cried incredulously. "Get rid of that thing!"

"Not to worry, boys! I'm on it!" she answered, pointing two fingers at them in a mini-salute . . . the light on the grenade began to blink faster, and just as the warning noise began to sound, she turned coolly, reared back with one arm like a baseball pitcher, and hurled the beeping time bomb straight into the Fix-It Felix tunnel.

_BBRREEOOOOOM!_

Felix and Ralph yelped and ducked to the floor of the station in unison, covering their heads with their hands as the grenade exploded in a blast of green flames and brought the brick archway crumbling down in a heap of rubble, completely burying the train tracks and sealing off the mouth of the tunnel.

Felix looked up, glancing first at the smoking pile of wreckage, then at his wife, who placed one shushing finger pointedly over her lips with one hand and flashed him a thumbs-up with the other.

Ralph, still dazed from the shock of the explosion, whirled around to look at the obliterated archway and threw his arms over his head in snarling groan that was equal parts fury and defeat.

"Calhoun! What is _wrong with you_?" Ralph roared impotently, shaking his hands at Tamora and sliding further down onto his knees. "You can't go one day without BLOWING SOMETHING UP?"

Tamora simply shrugged at him. Hooking his mouth in a dazed smile - that was both wildly impressed and slightly petrified with the lengths to which she was apparently willing to go to play her part in Vanellope's plan - Felix patted Ralph reassuringly on the shoulder and pulled the golden hammer from its holster on his belt, spinning it once in his fingers.

"Not to worry, brother," he said brightly, sneaking a furtive wink at his slyly grinning wife. "I can fix it! We'll have you on your way to Masterwork in _no time."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Saturday had proven to be a rather stressful day for Mike . . . not because of work, but because of the anxious thoughts of the previous night that never seemed to stop needling at her for very long. The arcade was a bit slow that day, in fact, and the absence of frequent gamers had only provided her with ample free time in which to worry.

_Even if she hadn't understood most of what Ralph and Vanellope had been discussing at her dining table the night before . . . . words like "firewall," "lockdown," and "surge protector" still held little if any meaning to her . . . . she did__understand that __**something**__ important was happening in that strange place they referred to as Game Central Station, something that mattered not only to what little she yet knew of the world, but to the entirety of the arcade._

_Something was going on . . . . something that had both of her new friends seriously worried._

Mike had been sitting and brooding at her easel in between games - looking thoughtfully over the collection of drawings she'd done while waiting for Ralph the night before, and gone outside to retrieve from the yard early that morning - when she was suddenly surprised to hear Litwak making the last call for games. She glanced at the clock in her studio, and was further confused to see that it was only six o'clock, a full hour before the arcade regularly closed. Creeping furtively up to her screen and peeking out of it from behind the automatic cut scene of the Masterwork landscape that scrolled between games, Mike watched with an alarmed jolt as the lights turned off and Litwak locked the doors behind him.

Her first instinct was to panic . . . her mind immediately shot to the assumption that something was wrong, that whatever it was Ralph and Vanellope had been afraid of had happened, or had gotten worse, or . . . _something . . . _but after a few seconds of paralyzing fear, Mike took a deep breath and forced herself to swallow back the rising surge of dread. She backed away from the game screen, holding her hands out palms-down to calm herself.

_Stop it. You're being paranoid, _she chided herself firmly, returning deliberately to her easel and sitting down with a slow exhale. _You don't know for sure that anything's wrong at all . . . . you need to __**stop **__letting every little thing throw you into a fit of terror . . . _

BINK, BINK, BINK!

"Waaugh!" Mike flinched and let out a short, tense yelp as an abrupt sound emanated faintly from somewhere beneath her studio . . . only to scold herself seconds later as she realized, with a leaping burst of happiness and relief, that it had to be Ralph, knocking on her door the first thing after the arcade had closed, just like he promised he would.

Biting her lip with a small, muted noise of delight, Mike jumped eagerly up from the chair and flipped open the trap door with one fluid motion of her foot, diving in toes first and sliding expertly down the ladder. Once in her kitchen, she paused for a quick moment to run her fingers through her hair and straighten her smock, then seized hold of the handle on the upper half of the Dutch door - _her heart pounding with excitement, the type of excitement that she somehow only seemed to feel when she knew she was going to see Ralph again_ - flung it open, and looked out at . . . .

. . . . nothing.

Mike's grin dropped, her face blanking as she stared through the empty upper doorframe. She blinked perplexedly, and was about to open her mouth to speak when she was cut off by the sound of someone gently clearing their throat.

"A, _hem . . . _. ah, down here."

Jumping slightly, Mike put both hands on the edge of the door and leaned over it to peer down towards the source of the voice . . . and her face instantly lit back up with a huge, dazzled smile when her gaze fell upon the familiar chubby pink cheeks, candy-spotted black hair and half-lidded hazel eyes of Vanellope Von Schweetz, standing there on her front stoop with her arms folded calmly and wearing a smug, smiling expression.

"Evening, Chickadee."

Mike bit back the urge to squeal out loud. Instead, she quickly threw open the lower half of the door and dropped down to one knee on the threshold, trying to reign in the instant resurgence of bubbling warmth at seeing the beautiful little girl again. Today, she had her long black hair pulled up in a floppy ponytail at the crown of her head, which only served to accentuate her adorably oversized ears. Mike extended both arms hopefully for a hug, but Vanellope made a face and leaned backward slightly, holding up her hands.

"Ah, ha ha . . . . sorry, I don't think so," she muttered squeakily, but not without a hint of warmth. "Maybe later."

Mike let her arms fall disappointedly back to her sides.

"Oh. Uh, right . . . sorry," she touched the back of her neck awkwardly and hesitated for a moment, when suddenly a curious thought occurred to her. "Hey, wait a second . . . Va . . . Vanellope, the arcade only closed . . . what, like . . . five minutes ago, didn't it?"

The little girl raised one eyebrow.

_"Yeah . . . _so?"

Mike hooked one corner of her mouth in a faintly smiling, baffled squint.

"So . . . . whenever _Ralph _comes to visit me, it usually takes him at least three times that long! How did you get here from your game so fast? . . . . and . . . . and where _is _Ralph, by the way? Didn't he come with you?" she added, turning her head to scan quickly around the yard, but seeing no sign of her prodigious friend.

Vanellope looked at her quietly for a moment, then pushed her hands into the front pocket of her sweatshirt and leaned her shoulders back with a broad, sly grin spreading slowly across her face.

_"Kid__ . . ." _she said, pausing with a touch of ironic emphasis. " . . . you've got a lot to learn about me. Oh, and as for your boyfriend, you don't have to worry . . . . he's waiting for us in the station, just outside your game."

Mike blinked. Something in the back of her mind seemed to twitch sensitively at the word _boyfriend, _but she was too distracted to pay it much thought.

"He . . . he is?"

Vanellope nodded brightly. "Uh-huh! He sent _me_ in to pick you up."

Mike raised her eyebrows.

"He . . . did. What do you mean, _pick me up?"_

The little girl's cool smile widened imperceptibly.

"I mean, he sent me to get you and bring you back to the station with me, ga-doi! He's got a _surprise _planned for you."

Mike sat up straighter and leaned back on her heels in the doorway, biting her lip in consternation as two opposing emotions began warring silently within her. One the one hand, she was not feeling particularly eager to return to Game Central Station after everything that had happened on her first strange excursion to the world-between-worlds . . . . but on the _other_ hand . . . . the mere idea of Ralph waiting there with a _surprise,_ planned especially for her, was not only enough to immediately assuage any real fears she had about returning to the station, but was also perhaps the sweetest and most enticing-sounding prospect she had yet encountered in her short life.

The conflict within her didn't last long.

"Ralph . . . . you mean . . . . he's there, right now, waiting for us?" she whispered eagerly, hunching forward and putting her face close to Vanellope's. The little girl's eyes sparkled, and she gave her a significant wink.

"More like waiting for _you._"

Mike's heart leapt in her chest and she couldn't suppress a small giggle of happiness that worked its way up her throat.

"Then what are we sitting here for? Let's _go!" _she jumped excitedly to her feet and seized Vanellope by the hand, turning to pull her along down the footpath towards the tunnel on the left.

"Whoa, _whoa!" _Vanellope chuckled, digging her heels in the dirt and holding up one hand to stop her. "Keep your shirt on, sweetheart. We're gonna go, alright_ . . . . _but we aren't gonna be _walking."_

Mike started in confusion. "What do you mean, not walking? How are we supposed to get there?"

Vanellope took a few steps off the footpath and into the grass, then jerked one thumb over her shoulder with an immensely pleased grin. Mike looked up in the direction she was pointing, leaning to the side to peer around the corner of her house . . . and stopped. Her jaw descended slightly as she narrowed her eyes at the bizarre, yet somehow alluring object that was sitting in the grass near the bank of the shoreline, the long sunbeams of early evening shining off its glittery, many-colored surfaces like a stained-glass window in the round.

Unfamiliar new words and concepts immediately began to buzz in her brain as she gaped at the garish thing parked on her lawn, but her curiosity was too great to wait for the burgeoning vocabulary to calibrate before opening her mouth.

"Vanellope . . . " she muttered lowly in fascination, taking a few almost hypnotized steps across the grass. " . . . . what . . . what is _that?"_

The little girl simply smiled and began walking calmly toward the peculiar object, motioning for Mike to follow her.

"Like I said, Chickadee . . . you've got a lot to learn. Come on over and let me give you a little demonstration."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

By the time Felix had finally finished fixing the archway and the train tracks, and he and Calhoun had finally stopped chattering at him and gone home to their own apartment so that he could _finally_ get back on the train and actually start off on his way to the station, Ralph was veritably fuming. He muttered irately to himself throughout the duration of the train ride, and stormed up to the Fix-It Felix Jr. portal with his fists clenched and his brow still narrowed heatedly.

What annoyed him most wasn't that Calhoun and Felix were clearly trying to stall him from going to Masterwork that evening . . . . it was the fact that there was obviously something secret going on that they weren't telling him. Ralph had always hated secrets - probably because for the overwhelming majority of his life, he was always the one being left out of them - but he never would have pegged Felix as the type to try and keep something hidden from him, and the whole thing seemed far too playful and whimsical for Calhoun to have cooked up.

_No . . . something else was definitely going on behind his back . . . and he had a sneaking suspicion just who might be behind it._

Rather unsurprisingly, a surge protector popped up the moment Ralph crossed the portal threshold, jerking him out of his fuming introspection with a half-hearted groan. _Sometimes he wondered if he would __**ever **__just be able to come and go through this lousy station in peace again . . . ._

The SP - another unfamiliar one he had never seen before - cast a bored, perfunctory glance at him before pulling a pen from his breast pocket and lifting his clipboard.

"Name?" he droned obligatorily.

In no mood for yet another pointless interrogation, Ralph took a sharp breath and answered in one rapid, impatient stream of speech laden heavily with sarcasm;

_"Wreck-It Ralph from Fix-It Felix Jr. on my way to Masterwork to visit a friend for a couple hours I'm nine feet tall six hundred and forty-nine pounds with size 26 feet coming back later with NOTHING TO DECLARE." _

The surge protector gave a stunned blink, his pen poised in midair.

"Uh . . . . v-very good, sir. Just let me remind you that at this time, characters are still politely asked to keep inter-game travel to a minimum, and - "

"Yeah, I'll try to remember that," Ralph muttered gruffly, stomping away before the SP could finish. The surge protector shot a nasty look at the back of his head, then made a heavy checkmark on his clipboard and blipped into the floor.

Ralph lumbered grumpily through the station towards Masterwork, letting his eyes roam absently around and trying to push all irritated thoughts and distractions to the back of his mind for later. He rolled his eyes lightly when he surveyed the thick streams of foot traffic flooding in and out of the station . . . obviously, no one was taking the limited-travel requests of the surge protection staff too seriously. Half the arcade seemed to be coming and going from the station that evening, and a general atmosphere of light-hearted recreation pervaded the air. Between appreciation of the weekend and the relief of the termination of the lockdown, it appeared that everyone was in a festively good mood and were headed out on the town for a night of celebration.

Forcing himself to forget about the odd behavior of his friends and focusing instead on the anticipation of seeing Mike again, Ralph finally managed to calm down and brace himself for the likely possibility of another frustrating security check as he approached the Masterwork gate . . . when all of a sudden, he heard something that made him stop, halting dead in his tracks just a few paces outside the portal. It was a faint sound, humming just barely audibly beneath the cheerful racket of the station, but it was there, nonetheless . . . it was so familiar that he was certain he'd heard it countless times before, but for some reason couldn't put his finger on what it was . . . .

After a couple seconds, Ralph realized that the noise was growing steadily louder, almost as if it were approaching him, and his eyes widened as the cause of the sound abruptly dawned on him.

_It was the roar of a go-kart engine._

_And not just __**any **__go-kart engine . . . . _

Ralph's spirits immediately plummeted.

_Please, no . . . . not tonight . . . ._

But before he could even work up another silent plea, the sound of the revving racecar motor exploded into the immediate vicinity at full volume, and dead ahead of him, through the plug gate and past the anteroom, the unmistakable color and shape of Vanellope's candy kart came speeding out of the dark opening of the Masterwork tunnel like a bullet from the barrel of a gun. Ralph froze with his feet rooted to the floor and reflexively squeezed his eyes shut and held his arms up to shield himself as the roaring kart flew over the small platform staircase and rocketed straight towards him through the hallway. The brakes screeched as Vanellope slammed her foot down on the pedal, and the kart did one pealing loop around Ralph and then skidded to a jolting halt beside him, tilting dangerously on two wheels for an instant and then clattering down flat on the smooth station floor.

Cracking his eyes open when he realized he was still standing there in one piece, Ralph whirled around to face the kart, ready to bear down on its driver and unload at her with a barrage of heated anger . . . . when all the hot air deflated from his chest like a punctured balloon, and his jaw fell down slack and useless as he blinked in disbelief to see not just Vanellope grinning back up at him, but _Mike . . . . _Mike herself, sitting cross-legged on the back of the candy-kart with her hands gripping the edge of the driver's pit so tightly her knuckles were white. She was panting breathlessly, and her already unruly hair was windblown back into an enormous, tangled bush of curls that stuck straight out like overstretched springs . . . but on her freckled face she was wearing an awestruck expression of pure, euphoric amazement. For a few seconds, she didn't even appear to fully register that the kart had stopped, or that Ralph was standing there gaping at them . . . she simply stared forward into space, blinking and gasping, her mouth open in a mind-boggled smile.

Cool as a cucumber, Vanellope calmly turned off the engine and lifted her racing goggles onto her forehead. She gave Ralph an immensely pleased-with-herself grin and jerked her head towards Mike.

"Whaddaya think, Stink-brain? Not bad for her first time, eh?"

Ralph stared speechlessly. He wasn't sure which he was feeling with greater intensity, _angry_ . . . . or impressed. After a short moment of struggling to find his voice, he decided it was an even combination of both. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Mike had whirled around to look at him, the dazzling sparkle in her eyes enough to immediately silence his rising tirade.

"RALPH!" she cried, laughing and jumping off the kart, rising somewhat dizzily to her feet. "Ralph, did you _see me!? _Did you see what we just . . . what she . . . and _this . . .!" _she pointed to the kart, too overwhelmed to even string together a complete thought. "Ralph, this is . . . it's the most unbe_liev_able . . . why didn't you TELL ME _about this?"_

Ralph blinked at her, almost at a loss for words.

"Mike, you . . . you mean . . . . you weren't _scared?"_

"Ha! _Scared?" _Vanellope snorted comically, climbing out of her car and leaning on the door coolly with one elbow. "If I'd left it up to _this one, _we'd still be doing donuts around Masterwork! I couldn't drive _fast _enough for her! You've got yourself a regular thrill jockey here, big boy."

Ralph looked incredulously at Vanellope, then back down at Mike, a hint of a small, disbelieving smile turning on his face.

"_Really?" _he said softly.

Mike was almost still too beside herself to answer. She was taking deep breaths and running her fingers through the hair at the base of her scalp to try and calm herself ( or rather, _trying _to run her fingers through her hair, as it appeared to be blown into such a tangle that it would take a knife to get through it ).

"I just . . . I never knew, I never _dreamed _that things like this existed! I mean, I knew that the other games were _different _from mine, but I never would have _thought . . . . " _she trailed off for a moment, turning to look back at the kart and shaking her head with a glow of admiration. "_Go-_karts, racetracks, an entire WORLD, all made out of _candy . . . _it's . . . it's beyond anything I could have ever imagined! Oh, Ralph . . . _Ralph . . . thank you!"_

Ralph's slowly growing smile was wiped away with a nonplussed jolt of surprise as Mike uttered her last words and abruptly leapt toward him, latching herself around his middle in a tight hug. Stunned, Ralph held his arms up at his sides, his face reddening slightly as he darted his eyes once around the station to see if anyone was watching them. He swallowed thickly and looked down at Mike as she squeezed him happily.

"What . . . what do you mean? Thank you for _wha_ - "

"Sorry, Ralph!" Vanellope cut him off hastily, shooting him a meaningful glance behind Mike's back. "She was just having so _fun_ much riding the kart, I couldn't keep it a secret anymore . . . sorry. I blabbed. She knows all about the _big surprise," _Vanellope put heavy emphasis on the last two words, winking sharply and tilting her head toward her candy kart.

Ralph narrowed his eyes in confusion.

"Big _surprise? _Vanellope, what are you - " then he stopped suddenly as all the pieces fell tumbling into place. _Felix and Calhoun trying to stall him as he was leaving for Masterwork . . . Vanellope sneaking in ahead of him to snatch up Mike and drive her into the station . . . ._

Ralph slowly turned his eyes back to Vanellope, a heavy glare darkening his face.

"Oh. Right. The _'surprise,'" _he played along, trying to mask his resentment under a low mutter. "So you _told her then."_

Vanellope shrugged innocently, an infuriatingly sweet smile plastered on her face.

"Sorry, big guy. I told you I'm no good at keeping secrets."

_No good at keeping secrets, my behind, you little brat! _Ralph fought back the urge to snarl scathingly. Instead, he gave another thick swallow and forced himself to remain calm as Mike eased her hold on him and stepped back, beaming as happily as could be. Ralph cleared his throat lightly, pinning Vanellope with an unappreciative stare.

"So . . . just how much of the surprise _did _you give away?"

"Pretty much all of it, I guess," she answered cheerfully. "She knows all about the welcome outing you planned for her, how you wanted to take her on her official first field trip outside the station and show her _all around _the arcade. I even let slip what our first stop is going to be!"

"'Our?' . . . . _'first!?'" _

Before he could recoil further, Mike drew his attention with a gleeful squeak.

"Ooooh, Ralph, I'm so excited I can hardly _stand it! _I can't _wait _to see Sugar Rush for myself!"

Ralph blinked, struggling to stitch all the pieces together in his head and keep himself from throttling Vanellope at the same time. The only thing that kept him from slipping up and letting his temper flare was the dauntless look of joy on Mike's face, and how genuinely amazed he was that she had not only been willing to return to the station, but that she wasn't showing the slightest sign of fear at the prospect of entering a game other than Masterwork. In spite of his roiling irritation at having been tricked into the whole escapade, Ralph couldn't help but feel . . . . well, _proud _of her.

Heaving a small sigh, he mustered a smile and resigned himself to simply play along with the idea for the time being, and wait until Mike was gone before sufficiently reading Vanellope the riot act she had coming.

"Well, I . . . I just thought it would be a good game for you to start off with. You know, nice and safe," he said warmly to Mike, feeling a little strange taking credit for an idea he would likely never have had the gumption to propose himself. Mike beamed, shifting eagerly for a moment between her feet and squeezing her hands into fists. It was clear she was torn between the desire to throw herself at Ralph again and to get going immediately on their expedition, but after a second she evidently chose the latter.

"Then what are we waiting for?" she cried happily. "Let's go, let's go right now!"

"Hold it!" Vanellope interjected, casting a quick glance down to the other end of the station. "We can't take off just yet . . . we're still waiting for the rest of our party."

Mike's eyes widened in curiosity as Ralph's simultaneously squinted in groaning realization.

_No, Vanellope . . . oh, please, no . . . . _

"Aha!" Vanellope cackled triumphantly on cue, jumping onto the hood of her kart and holding her hand over her eyes to peer across the station. "Here they come, now!"

Ralph looked up, already knowing who he would see, but his face and shoulders drooping nevertheless in defeat as he spotted the familiar figures of Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It, floating swiftly towards them on Calhoun's hover-cruiser. As they drew near and lowered down to the floor, Mike went abruptly rigid and inched over to hug Ralph's side, clinging to his forearm as she eyed the newcomers with an even blend of curiosity and wariness.

Calhoun and Felix stepped and hopped down to the floor, respectively, and turned to address the small group. Despite the mounting apprehension of the moment, Ralph did a double take and had to stifle a sharp snigger as he got his first good look at what Calhoun was wearing. She had changed out of her body armor and was dressed in something Ralph had only seen her wear once before, on her wedding day . . . a _skirt. _The gruff blonde space sergeant . . . who, whenever not clad in her high-tech armor, was typically dressed as if it was her laundry day at a unisex military boot camp . . . was momentarily almost unrecognizable in a navy blue, knee-length pencil skirt and sleeveless white blouse. She was even wearing nice _shoes. _As she was dismounting her cruiser, Calhoun noticed his suppressed choke of laughter and shot him a scorching warning-glare. Felix was also dressed in a suit of his nicer clothes . . . still adorned with his trademark cap, gloves, and tool belt, but wearing the long-sleeved blue shirt and darker blue sweater vest he reserved for special occassions.

For a few seconds that seemed to drag on agonizingly slowly, the five of them simply stood there and blinked at each other.

Per usual, Vanellope was the one to finally break the ice.

"Er . . . yes, well! Ah, _Mike_," she began brightly, moving to her other side and gesturing toward the couple, "I'd like you to meet our good friends, the Fix-Its! This is Fix-It Felix Jr. . . "

Vanellope paused, and Felix removed his cap and held his hand up in a small wave, showing his teeth in a somewhat embarrassed smile.

" . . . from the _game _of the same name_, _Fix-It Felix Jr.," he added hastily in explanation, noticing Mike's confused eyebrow raise.

" . . . and _this,"_ Vanellope continued, ". . .is his . . . er . . . lovely wife, Sergeant Tamora Jean Calhoun Fix-It. But we just call her Calhoun."

Mike squinted silently at Calhoun for a few seconds, then gave a sudden twitch, her eyes shooting wide open in recognition and her hands digging tighter in Ralph's arm as she hid herself further behind him. They all winced in unison as the awkward incident with the plasma cannon popped up in their memories. Calhoun made a face and shifted uncomfortably, touching the side of her bare neck.

"Um . . . yeah . . . uh, listen . . . Mike," she muttered sheepishly, leaning a bit to the side to find Mike's eyes with her own. "About the, uh . . . the whole laser thing? It was an accident. I definitely did not try to incinerate you on purpose."

This speech appeared to do very little to ease Mike's fears, as she only responded by clutching Ralph's arm so tightly her nails almost dug into his skin. Flinching, Ralph shot a stern, venomous look in Calhoun's direction, and she squirmed again.

" . . . _and, _I . . . wanted to tell you that I'm _sorry," _she finished quietly, her voice actually managing to ease out of its grudging tone.

For another brief moment, they were all silent.

Then, a bit like a turtle peeking out timidly from its shell to see if passing predators were gone, Mike inched out from behind Ralph and slowly let go of his arm, taking a step forward and looking up into Calhoun's face with an almost blank, unreadable expression. Calhoun blinked in surprise, and for a split second the two women just stared at each other.

Then . . . to Ralph's pleased astonishment . . . Mike's face split abruptly into her usual eager smile and she jutted her arm straight out toward Calhoun, making the taller woman lean back slightly.

"Michelangela," she stated plainly. "Pleasure to meet you, Calhoun!"

The other three members of the group breathed a collective sigh of relief. Smiling back with a slight quirk of amusement, Calhoun took Mike's hand and shook it.

"Pleasure, yourself. And I gotta admit, missy . . . you dodge a blast pretty well for someone of your . . . . er . . . . _program _type."

Mike accepted the half compliment with an oblivious smile, then turned and bent forward to offer her hand to Felix, who seized it immediately and shook it with a relieved exhale.

_"Whew! _Well, I'm sure glad _that's _all cleared up . . . and I'm pleased as punch to finally make your official acquaintance, ma'am!" Felix beamed as he pumped her arm enthusiastically. "I've been Ralph's colleague for over thirty years now, and I must say . . . I've _never _seen him so twitterpated with anyone in all my - "

"YUP, well, now that everybody's been intro_duced . . ." _Ralph cut off his protagonist sharply, fighting back the quick flash of heat rising in his face. " . . . maybe we should get this show on the _road . . . _whaddaya say?"

Mike looked up from her interested gaze at Felix and answered him with a fierce nod.

"Oh, yes, _please, _let's go now!"

Vanellope cackled shortly in agreement and jumped into her kart, settling her goggles back down over her eyes.

"Alright, then, lady and gents, you heard the guest of honor! Let's get this party _started!"_

She punched the start button and loudly revved the engine of her kart, causing Mike to giggle again with excitement. Calhoun and Felix mounted their hover-board again, and Vanellope looked over her shoulder to shoot Ralph an impatient glance.

"Well? Climb aboard, slowpoke, the evening awaits!"

Sighing briefly and rubbing one hand over his face, wondering how in the world he had gotten roped into this ordeal - when all he had wanted that night was a quiet visit alone with Mike - Ralph obediently plunked down in his usual seat on the back of the kart, the cookie frame bouncing and creaking with protest as he settled his feet on either side of the driver's pit. Vanellope shifted the kart into gear, and he sat up straighter as an obvious problem suddenly occurred to him.

"Hold on, kid! If I'm sitting here, then where is Mike going to - "

Before he could finish voicing the thought, Michelangela had put both hands on his bent knee and vaulted herself straight into his lap, landing sideways across his legs with a delicate _plop! _and latching her hands around his neck.

Ralph froze in mid-sentence, his cheeks warming irrepressibly as he felt the combined stare of three pairs of eyes smiling knowingly at him. He heard Calhoun barely suppress a chuckling snort of payback.

"There! Problem solved," Vanellope piped happily, and settled her hands on the steering wheel. "Okay . . . hold onto your butts, you two!"

She tapped her foot firmly on the gas pedal, and Ralph bit back a yelp as he instinctively clamped one hand on the side of the kart to balance himself and wrapped the other protectively around Mike, holding her securely in his lap as Vanellope drove off at a moderate speed through Game Central Station, winding expertly around the milling characters who jumped in surprise and needlessly tried to dart out of her path. Calhoun and Felix started off a second later and quickly caught up with them, zooming along in midair beside the kart. Ralph glanced up at them out of the corner of his eye, only to fume again with embarrassment when Felix pointed furtively at the girl in his lap and gave him a not-so-subtle wink.

He couldn't stay irritated for long, however . . . they hadn't been driving twenty seconds before Mike tightened her hug around Ralph's neck, making small noises of delight every time Vanellope revved the engine or banked them sharply around an electronic message board as they drew steadily nearer to the Sugar Rush game portal.

Mike let her head lean on Ralph's shoulder, and his pulse began to pound responsively, his right hand unconsciously holding her a bit closer.

"_Thank you, _Ralph," she whispered in his ear, the blissful elation lilting in her tone. "This is the most wonderful thing anyone's ever done for me."

Ralph swallowed, and had to concentrate willfully not to lose his grip on the side of the kart as his heart skipped a beat with a little thrill of emotion.

_Maybe . . . just maybe, this would turn out to be one of Vanellope's better ideas, after all . . . . _


	26. Chapter 25: Jump Into Your Racing-Car

**Review Response: **I normally don't respond to reviews in updates this way, but one reviewer posted a very interesting question on the last chapter that I'd like to answer publicly. The question was whether I had given any thought to what actress would supply the voice for Mike, if she were an actual character in the movie . . . . to which, my answer is yes; the actress whose voice I would pick for Mike in my fantasy casting is the funny and talented Ellen Page. I think her voice has the perfect blend of awkward sweetness that would be just right for Mike.

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 25: Jump Into Your Racing-Car_

_Donna michi datte . . . massugu janai darou . . . . _

Even with the combined rumble of the candy-kart's engine and the dull, roaring jet exhaust of Calhoun's cruiser echoing together in the confined passage as they drew closer and closer to the light at the end of the tunnel, Ralph could somehow still hear the faint, foreign lyrics of the Sugar Rush theme song off in the distance . . . growing gradually louder and more excited with each word, as if the program itself was coaxing them forward along the sugar-spackled rainbow leading into the game.

_Sou magari kunette . . . dekoboku shiteru, hazu sa . . . ._

Vanellope shifted the kart into a lower gear and slowed down slightly as the overpoweringly sweet scent of her approaching world grew steadily stronger, along with the glow of brilliant yellow sunshine and the cheerful Japanese singing. Finally, they drove over the lilting crest of the final hill and the opening to the colorful candy landscape popped into view. Mike's grip around his neck instantly tightened, her small hands practically quivering with a combination of tension and excitement at which Ralph couldn't help but smile.

_Tsurai koto toki ni wa aru yo ne . . . bokutachi wa soredemo, hashiru yo . . . ._

"Get ready . . . here it comes!" Ralph muttered privately in Mike's ear, and she turned to look breathlessly at him with a dazzling flash of her green eyes a split second before they came braking to a halt just inside the entrance to the game, the atmosphere of palpable sweetness washing suddenly over them. The kart engine growled to a silent stop at the highest peak of the rainbow bridge, and Calhoun lowered her hover-board down beside it. All five of them looked up in unison, blinking in the sunshine, with the vibrant, glittering vastness of the candy world spreading out before them.

_. . . . amai mono demo, ikaga?_

For a brief second, Mike went completely still and motionless in Ralph's arms, her face freezing in a blank expression as soon as her eyes adjusted to the glaring sunlight. Then, she slowly let go of his neck and crawled down from the back of the kart, her bare feet padding on the sugar-crystal pavement of the road as she walked forward to the very edge of the steep downward descent . . . then stopped, standing there perfectly straight and still with her arms at her sides and her face hidden from them as she gazed out at the endless expanse of Sugar Rush. A faint whisper of sweet-smelling breeze wafted the flyaway ends of her hair just as the game's theme music finished building up to its first crescendo and sang out all around them, almost like a deliberate fanfare of welcome . . .

_S, U, G-A-R, jump into your racing car, say SUGAR RUSH! SUGAR RUSH! Hey! S, U, G-A-R, jump into your racing car, say SUGAR RUSH! SUGAR RUSH! Hey!_

The music quieted slightly as it continued into the second verse, and for a long moment, Ralph and the others held back at the mouth of the portal archway and watched Mike from behind as she continued to simply stand and stare silently out at the game.

The Fix-Its exchanged warm, amused glances. Vanellope lifted her goggles onto her forehead and looked over her shoulder at Ralph, winking and grinning proudly as she flashed him a thumbs-up. Ralph shook his head at her, but couldn't keep the broad, infectious smile from spreading over his own face as he looked back up at Mike. Her back was still turned to them, but he somehow knew, without having to see it, what kind of expression was silently drawing on her face. Her hands slowly lifted and clasped over her heart in the familiar gesture that he'd begun to recognize as the indicator of whenever something moved her almost too deeply for words. Ralph smiled wider as he dismounted the kart and stood up, resting his hands satisfactorily on his hips.

"Well?" he said, the smile audible in his voice. "What do you think, Miss Masterwork?"

Mike waited a few seconds longer after he spoke, then finally, slowly turned around to look back at them . . . and Ralph was startled to see that she actually looked as if she had unshed tears shining in the wide, green pools of her eyes. Her lips were parted speechlessly, her hands pressed over her chest as if trying to hold in a gasp. She began to shake her head slightly, as if silently communicating that she didn't even know what to say. She took a few blind, staggering steps backward, without looking behind her . . . . and abruptly fell off the edge of the rainbow road. Her eyes popped visibly for one instantaneous second as she suddenly discovered that there was no more ground beneath her, then disappeared as she simply dropped clean out of sight.

Four jaws hit the ground in unison.

_"MIKE!" _Ralph bellowed frantically, his feet rooting to the ground in shock.

As the others froze helplessly, Calhoun immediately jolted into action.

"ON IT!" she barked sharply, and in one fluid, lightning-fast motion she simultaneously pushed Felix off of the cruiser and slammed her high-heeled foot down on the ignition pad. The jets exploded to life, shooting the hover-board instantly up into the air, and the last thing any of them saw was the bright flash of Calhoun's hair whipping back out of her face and the brilliant blue flare of the rocket flame as she plummeted in a vertical nosedive straight over the side of the bridge.

Ralph and Vanellope remained locked rigidly in place, gaping powerlessly, but Felix quickly recovered himself and scrambled to his feet on the rainbow pavement, darting to the edge and looking down in the direction his wife had flown.

For one still, pulsing moment that seemed to last a lifetime, the three of them waited in total silence.

Then, Felix let out a bursting, laughing gasp of relief and staggered back from the crystallized precipice.

"She's got her!" he cried thankfully, holding one hand over his chest and clapping the other to his forehead.

Vanellope whooped a similar noise of relief and jumped gleefully out of her kart, but Ralph remained rooted to the spot, still barely able to make himself breathe. His heart was thudding so heavily it was almost painful, as if he'd just suffered a minor cardiac infarction.

Another few seconds passed, and they presently heard the dull roar of the cruiser jets growing steadily louder, until Calhoun ascended calmly back up into their line of vision. Her feet were planted in a firm, wide stance on her hover-board, and in her sleeveless arms she was holding a very wide-eyed, very dazed-looking Michelangela, cradling her bridal-style without the slightest sign of strain. Mike was clinging to the taller woman like a stunned toddler, without so much as blinking until Calhoun had landed the cruiser gently back down on the bridge and lowered her shakily to her feet.

The second Mike was standing once again unaided on the road, Ralph immediately jerked back into mobility, practically tripping over Vanellope and Felix as he dashed toward her and seized her by the shoulders with both hands, tilting her back and actually lifting her toes an inch off the ground as he frantically looked her up and down.

_"Mike! _Sweet, son of a . . . . you almost gave me a _heart-attack! _Are you hurt!?"

Calhoun rolled her eyes as she stepped nonchalantly off of her cruiser.

"Relax, Wreck-It, she's _fine." _

"Quick _thinking, _buttercup!" Felix whistled happily, resting one hand against his wife's skirted leg and fanning himself briefly with the other. "Thank heavens _you _were here!"

"I'll say . . . another second, and you would have been nothing but a _grease spot _on the side of Mount Sugar-est!" Vanellope muttered critically at Mike, but failed to mask the thick relief evident in her tone. "You've gotta keep that bushy head of yours out of the clouds from now on, Chickadee . . . . you're not in Masterwork anymore. You die in this world, and it's _game over _for _good!_ Understand?"

Mike neither moved, nor made a sound . . . she hadn't responded to anything since she'd been placed back on the rainbow road. Ralph eased her carefully down to her feet, but kept his protective grip around her shoulders, peering anxiously into her dazed, deadpan stare.

"Mike? Can you hear us?" he tried again firmly, giving her a gentle shake. "Are you _okay?"_

Michelangela was silent for another short moment . . . then, like a sleepwalker jerking suddenly awake, she blinked repeatedly, and her vacant expression instantly lit up with an incredulous smile.

"Am I _okay?"_ she parroted back at Ralph, looking up at him with such an abrupt dazzle of excitement that she made him jump and let go of her shoulders. "Am I O_KAY? _I'm _more _than okay! I've never been better in my _life!"_

She grabbed the good strap of Ralph's overalls and shook him emphatically back and forth a few times. He stared blankly at her, and without missing a beat she spun on her heel and crouched over to face Vanellope.

"It's . . . it's even _more _than everything you said it would be! It's too incredible for _words!"_

Vanellope jumped slightly, then blinked with a pleasantly surprised smile and opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak Mike had already whirled away again, this time to face Calhoun.

"And you! You saved my life!" she cried happily, and before Calhoun could so much as take a breath, Mike had lunged at her and gripped her in a vice-like hug, pinning her arms to her sides and fitting the crown of her wildly curly head just beneath the baffled space-sergeant's chin.

Ralph and the others stared speechlessly for a split-second at the fierce, one-sided embrace . . . then each of them - even Felix - choked in unison on a sharp snort of laughter at the stunned expression on Calhoun's face.

Calhoun blinked rapidly, her mouth opening and hanging wordlessly for a moment.

"N-no . . . . . no problem," she muttered, squeaking somewhat breathlessly as Mike forced the air out of her lungs in a final squeeze and then abruptly let go.

"Thank you! Thank you all so _much _for bringing me here!" she squealed, folding her hands and bouncing once on her toes in a paroxysm of delight. Without waiting for any of them to respond, she seized Ralph's hand in both of hers and tugged it fiercely, pulling him a few steps toward the downward slope of the rainbow road and then letting go to hurry on herself. She ran several paces ahead of them and paused to look back over her shoulder, apparently oblivious to their dumbfounded stares as she urged them forward with an excited wave.

"Come on, let's _go! _I want to see _everything _in Sugar Rush, everything there is to _see!"_

She turned and continued jogging along gleefully down the hill.

There was a brief pause, and then Calhoun cleared her throat - her cheeks looking the faintest bit pinker than usual - and snatched up the compacted shape of her cruiser, hoisting it over her shoulder and setting off after Mike with a stiff nod toward the others.

"Come . . . ah . . . come on, kids," she murmured, stammering just briefly. "We better make sure the little ditz doesn't hurt herself."

One corner of his mouth quirking up in a warm, still slightly dazed smile, Ralph picked up Vanellope's candy-kart and balanced it over one shoulder as he, Felix and Vanellope followed Calhoun and Michelangela down the rainbow bridge. As they were walking, Vanellope leaned over and elbowed Ralph lightly in the side of the leg, winking at him again when he glanced down at her.

"What did I tell ya, Ralph?" she muttered with a sly grin, jerking her thumb twenty yards ahead of them to where Mike was darting eagerly from side to side of the bridge, stopping to peer alternately over each edge every few seconds with an exhilarated, wonder-struck gleam of anticipation. "_Thrill jockey."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

A few minutes later, as the five of them were drawing near to the Royal Raceway square and the ornate, glittering arch of the finish-line, Ralph became suddenly aware of an unusual level of noise and general activity coming from the stands and the racers' pits. As they came within sight of the Jumbo-tron, Ralph discovered that despite there being no Random Roster Race scheduled for that evening ( since tomorrow was Sunday, and the arcade would be closed ), the square was densely crowded with what looked to be the entire population of Sugar Rush, racers and candy citizens alike filling the stands to capacity and lining the sides of the track near the starting position. The floating marshmallow pit-attendants were actively sweeping off the checkered finish-line, and as soon as the small, ragtag party of characters led by their President came within visible distance, one of the racers pointed them out excitedly to the others and a scattered cheer rippled through the crowd.

Mike was veritably beside herself with awe. It was a small miracle she was even able to keep moving forward under her own power, she was so obviously blown away by everything surrounding them. She staggered along towards the front of the group, her eyes bugged permanently as wide as possible and her hands clasping alternately over her mouth and her heart as she turned around in continual, mesmerized circles, barely able to finish taking in one sight before darting her head toward another.

Ralph smiled affectionately at her visibly overwhelmed amazement, knowing that it wasn't even possible for him to fully imagine the extent of what she was feeling at the moment . . . . but as their group finally came to a stop in the middle of the square and all of the other Sugar Rush racers quickly arranged themselves into orderly ranks nearby, Ralph's smile wavered suspiciously. He put Vanellope's kart down on the track with a jostling _klunk, _then shuffled back to the sidelines and bent over to raise one eyebrow at her in a look of skeptical disdain.

"Hey . . . . what's with all the fanfare, kid? Why is everybody here?" he asked quietly, keeping his voice down so that Mike wouldn't overhear . . . although, judging by the look of wondrous rapture with which she was surveying the looming stands filled with sentient, bouncing candy creatures, she probably wouldn't have noticed if a bomb went off in her immediate vicinity.

Vanellope . . . with a smiling flare of her trademark puckishness . . . simply shrugged.

"Guess they all had nothing better to do!" she remarked innocently.

Ralph narrowed his brow at her, but before he could say anything else, Mike accidentally bumped into him as she was walking slowly backwards and gazing up at the nearest grandstand, filled to the brim with smiling, cheering lollipops. She flinched only slightly when she backed into Ralph, then looked over her shoulder at him with a dumbfounded smile of disbelief.

_"Ralph . . . " _she whispered loudly, squeezing her hands into fists and pressing them against her collar-bone, " . . . I have _got _to come back here with my drawing pad. This is the most _incredible place in the world!"_

Forgetting his suspicions for a moment, Ralph chuckled and put one hand on her shoulder, squeezing her gently.

"Don't speak too soon," he advised warmly. "You haven't _seen _the rest of the world, yet. Just wait until you get a load of -"

"Bring it over here, Chickadee!" Vanellope suddenly piped up loudly from a few yards away, beckoning Mike and the others over toward the smooth bank at the side of the finish line where the racers would queue up daily to enter their fee for the Random Roster Race. "I've got some _children _for you to meet!"

Immediately responding to Vanellope's deliberate choice of words, Mike gasped sharply with elation and, without looking back at Ralph or waiting for him to finish, hurried over to the edge of the bank. Ralph frowned slightly and shot a skeptical, faintly hurt glance at the Fix-Its, but they only shrugged at him in reply.

"She's just ex_cited, _Ralph," Felix said reassuringly as the three of them walked calmly along after her. "Can you blame her? It's her very first time in another game!"

"I don't blame _her," _Ralph clarified bluntly. "It's _Vanellope_ I don't trust. That stinker is up to something with all this," he gestured around toward the crowded stands and the lit-up Jumbo-tron.

Calhoun rolled her eyes dismissively. "Oh, lighten _up, _Wreck-It. The way I see it, you should be _thanking _that little pipsqueak . . . . if it weren't for her, Mrs. Magoo over there would still be holed up in her own game like a turtle too scared to come out of its shell."

Ralph's nostrils flared indignantly, but before he could respond, Vanellope spoke up again, drawing all of their attention forward to the group of characters she had assembled in front of them.

_"Mike . . . . " _she said sweetly, motioning to the patiently waiting assortment of candy-themed, child-sized avatars; " . . . . I'd like to introduce you to the _Sugar Rush racers. _Sugar Rush racers . . . . this is Mike."

The kids all nodded and smiled, some of them shooting snarky sideways glances at one another and making furtive gestures toward Mike. Ralph narrowed his eyes at them, taking this as only further confirmation of his suspicions . . . . it was obvious that the racers had only assembled there beforehand at the direct behest of their President.

Any traces of sarcasm or mock pleasantry on the part of the Sugar Rush racers was flatly lost on Michelangela, however. The moment she laid eyes on the small herd of fifteen cute, colorful little characters, she had clamped both hands over her mouth to stifle a veritable shriek of delight . . . and as soon as Vanellope gave her a grinning nod of permission, Mike had immediately jumped right into the middle of the group and dropped down to her knees amongst them, making several of them blink and stumble back in surprise. The two unlucky avatars nearest her - Swizzle Malarkey and Gloyd Orangeboar - were unable to scramble away fast enough before she caught one of them in each arm and pulled them into a squeezing hug, making indiscernible noises of happiness to herself.

The other racers froze, looking at each other with mild expressions of confusion and disdain. Vanellope just pointed at Gloyd and laughed unashamedly as his face turned bright red, and he and Swizzle each struggled fruitlessly to pry themselves out of Mike's embrace. Ralph couldn't hold back a small snicker of his own, and he noticed Felix and Calhoun shooting him amused looks.

"This one's, ah . . . . she's got a bit of a thing for _hugs, _doesn't she?" Calhoun muttered, not without a touch of warmth.

Ralph shook his head and smiled.

"She's got a thing for _kids," _he corrected.

Momentarily oblivious to everything besides the candy children surrounding her, Mike finally let go of Swizzle and Gloyd and began addressing each racer in turn, either pinching their cheeks or hugging them briefly or seizing their small hands and shaking them with a ceaseless stream of delighted cooing. She was as gleeful and excited as a proverbial kid in a not-so-proverbial candy store.

"Ooooh, just _look _at you!" she squealed blissfully as she put both hands on the sides of Taffyta Muttonfudge's pink face and pushed her cheeks together softly. "You're just so _airashii! Anata ha watashito, issho ni ie woshitai no desu ga! O namaeha?"_

Everyone within earshot of Mike, including Taffyta and the other racers, immediately paused and turned to stare blankly at her. Ralph blinked and widened his eyes in astonishment, wondering if he'd just heard her correctly. He turned a baffled look toward the Fix-Its, and their matching nonplussed expressions only confirmed that they'd heard it, as well. For a few seconds, everyone was silent . . . . except for Mike, who apparently hadn't noticed all of the utterly confused stares she was eliciting and continued talking.

_"Anata ha konoyou, nautsukushiigeemu kokoga ari masu!" _she exclaimed happily, beaming around at the other racers, who only shrugged and exchanged weird looks with one another. Jubileena Bing-Bing crossed her eyes and pointed one index finger at Mike, waving the other in a mocking, circular motion at the side of her temple.

Ralph leaned over and muttered quizzically to Felix and Calhoun from the corner of his mouth.

"Is . . . . is Mike doing what I _think _she's doing?"

Felix pushed his cap up and scratched his head with a dumbfounded stare.

"I . . . _think _so . . . that language she's speaking . . . it's . . . "

"Japanese!" Calhoun filled in for him, looking both bewildered and slightly impressed as she raised one eyebrow toward Mike. "Well, bust my kneecaps and call me a doorstop. You didn't tell us she knew Japanese, Wreck-It."

Ralph just shook his head blankly.

"I . . . I didn't _know."_

"Looks like the racers don't know it, either," Felix observed, gesturing to the confused and slightly irritated-looking gaggle of children, who had begun to cast questioning glances toward their President, who was watching the scene unfold with no more idea of what was happening than any of them. Taffyta, whose face was still trapped in Mike's hands, looked pleadingly at Vanellope from the corner of her huge eyes.

"Uuumm . . . P-President Von Schweetz? Isn't it about time to start the . . . the _you know what?"_

Vanellope blinked, shaking herself bluntly out of her stunned fascination and clearing her throat officiously.

"_Oh, _ah . . . yeah, _yeah, _of course! Taffyta's right. Ah . . . attendants!" she raised her voice and clapped twice, and a small team of floating marshmallows and waddling hard candies assembled quickly beside the track, each of them wearing a billed cap and radio headset.

Vanellope cleared her throat again, her mind visibly struggling to shift gears for a moment longer. Then, she abruptly regained herself to the height of her pomp and pageantry, and raised her hands over her head as she turned and projected her small voice illustriously to the crowd.

"Bring out the karts!" she declared grandly, and an excited cheer roared up from the stands as the track attendants all rushed off obediently toward the pits. The other Sugar Racers pumped their fists and gave each other jubilant high-fives, abruptly forgetting all about Mike as they too hurried off to the other side of the track. They stampeded away and left her still kneeling on the ground, waving after them with a slightly forlorn, but wistfully enchanted smile of longing.

"Oh, _Ralph," _she breathed dreamily as he lumbered towards her. Mike took the hand that he offered her and rose slowly to her feet, but never broke her gaze from the direction in which the racers had fled. "They're all just so beautiful_ . . . . _they're like little _angels!"_

"Ah . . . yeah, right. Angels," Ralph muttered distractedly in agreement, an unbidden memory of the "angelic" little gang of Sugar Rush twerps all smashing Vanellope's homemade kart and pushing her down in a puddle of chocolate mud flashing in his head. He shook it off and turned his thoughts back to the puzzling question at hand.

"So, Mike . . . " he began haltingly, and she finally looked up at him. "I, ah . . . I didn't know you could speak Japanese. That was pretty . . . er . . . im_pressive."_

Mike made a strange face, as if she didn't understand what he was talking about.

"Huh?" she blinked. "Speak what now?"

Ralph started lightly with surprise.

"Japanese," he repeated, his brow knitting bewilderedly. "You know . . . that language you were just _talking to the racers in?"_

Mike narrowed her eyes quizzically at him another moment, then suddenly opened her mouth and drew in a slow breath of understanding.

_"Oooohh . . . . _you mean that language from the theme song, earlier!" she exclaimed, then shrugged nonchalantly. "I don't know . . . I just thought it might be a nice gesture to greet the characters of this game in their native speak."

Ralph just stared at her and blinked again, her answer only compounding his mystification.

"But . . . but . . . hold on a second, here. _None_ of the Sugar Rush characters speak Japanese . . . Vanellope sure doesn't! Mike, are . . . are you . . . are you trying to tell me that you figured out how to speak the _whole language_, just from listening to the game's theme song? _Once?"_

Mike looked back at him innocently and simply shrugged again.

"I . . . guess so. I hadn't really stopped to think about it."

Ralph's jaw hung open in confounded silence, his brain struggling to process this baffling new development. Before he could even find his voice again, his thoughts were suddenly brusquely interrupted by the sound of Vanellope clearing her throat into a microphone.

He, Mike, and the Fix-Its all jerked their heads simultaneously in the direction of the amplified noise and saw their pint-sized friend gripping the grand-stand microphone in one hand, wearing an immensely pleased grin and leaning on the hood of her parked candy-kart in the middle of the track. Sour Bill had appeared beside her, wearing his traditional glower and feeding out the wire for the microphone, which trailed back toward the pits on the opposite side of the square. Ralph looked around and saw, with a sudden blow of comprehension, that all fifteen of the other Sugar Rush racers had also assembled in their starting positions behind the finish line, the many-colored array of their personalized karts arranged neatly on the track like candies on a tray. Behind Vanellope's kart, rolled up in a neat row along the finish-line, were three more unaccompanied karts concealed mysteriously beneath white taffy-tarps.

The crowd of candy citizens was roaring in anticipation.

Ralph slapped one hand over his forehead and dragged it slowly down the length of his face, feeling abruptly like a complete and utter chump.

_Of course. Of __**course **__Vanellope had had this all planned out from the beginning._

_How had he not seen it coming a mile away?_

"Hello and welcome, sweet citizens of Sugar Rush!" Vanellope's voice boomed cheerfully through the loudspeakers positioned at various intervals around the square. "How y'all doin' tonight?"

A raucous wave of applause went up from the stands, and a few of the other racers whooped and cat-called from their places on the track. Vanellope gave them a cool wink and held up one hand for silence.

"That's what I thought," she grinned. "As you all know, we've got a very special treat in store for you this fine Saturday evening. Taking part in our friendly, non-competitive race tonight are four out-of-gamers very dear to your President's heart."

Vanellope gestured toward the group at the side of the track, and Ralph felt the collective eyes of hundreds of living pieces of candy turn to him and the others in unison. By the looks on Calhoun and Felix's faces, he could tell that this part of Vanellope's scheme was as much a shock to them as it was to him . . . . but Mike, contrary to the rest of them, was looking around with an awestruck smile as if she'd never seen anything more thrilling unfold before her in her life.

"Three of these friends, of course, need no introduction," Vanellope continued, pointing to Ralph and the Fix-Its as the crowd rippled with a short wave of appreciative laughter. "But before we begin tonight's non-competitive, I'd like to bring your attention for a moment to our _fourth _out-of-game racer . . . . her name is Michelangela, and she's coming to us tonight all the way from _Masterwork. _Give us a wave, Mike!"

The crowd cheered pleasantly again, and all of a sudden a camera feed of Mike's startled face appeared twenty feet high on the bright screen of the Jumbo-tron. The moment Mike looked up and saw her own likeness projected on the enormous board, her cheeks flushed bright pink and she darted behind Ralph, hiding behind his arm. The crowd, however, began to chant her name encouragingly, and after a few seconds she peered out from behind him and offered them a timid, embarrassed smile, lifting one hand in a shy little wave.

Vanellope chuckled good-naturedly into the microphone.

"Isn't she just precious, folks? Now, remember . . . Mike is new to the arcade, and this is her first time at a real _race, _so let's try to take it a little easy on her . . . . _right, _everybody?"

Vanellope cast a patronizing look back at the other racers, who only chuckled and narrowed their eyes mischievously. Ralph began to get a very uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.

With another impish laugh, Vanellope handed off the microphone to Sour Bill and began impatiently beckoning the group of four onto the racetrack.

"Come on, kids, time's a - wastin'!" she urged them excitedly, jumping into the seat of her own kart and vigorously waving them over. "Racers, to your karts!"

The other Sugar Rush avatars eagerly hopped into their own candy-karts and settled themselves behind the wheels, ready to punch their engines to life at a second's notice.

Ralph, Mike, Felix, and Calhoun all hesitated on the sidelines for another moment, giving each other skeptical glances.

"Do we _have _to?" Ralph muttered gruffly under his breath.

Felix shrugged. "Maybe we ought to give it a chance," he suggested, trying to sound optimistic. "Who knows? It could be a lot of fun!"

"Yeah, _fun_ . . . and after this, we can all paint our toenails and go for pony rides," Calhoun rolled her eyes sarcastically. "Still . . . it _does _seem like the kid went to a lot of trouble to organize all this. I guess the least we can do is humor her."

Unconsciously, the three of them all slowly turned their eyes toward Mike, who twitched slightly under their combined gazes and darted her eyes between them, her cheeks still flushing beneath her freckles.

"We'll leave it up to you, Miss Michelangela," Felix said politely, removing his cap. "This is your night, and we won't do anything you're not comfortable with."

Mike's blush went just faintly paler, and she fidgeted a bit with the front of her smock as she looked back and forth between them and the waiting pack of Sugar Rush racers. She swallowed thickly, shooting a debating glance up at Ralph.

"You . . . you want _me _to decide?"

Despite the distinctively bad feeling about the whole idea that he couldn't seem to shake, Ralph forced himself to give her a warm, reassuring nod.

"Felix is right. It's your night, Mike . . . if you want to race, then we'll race."

Mike swallowed again, and turned to gaze one last time out across the glittering finish line. Ralph followed the line of her vision and saw Vanellope, catching Mike's eye and nodding at her slowly with an enticing, devilish grin as she slipped her pink goggles down over her face.

Ralph watched Mike as she hesitated a second longer, biting her lip in a thoughtful frown as nagging fear and mounting excitement warred visibly for a few seconds behind her flashing green eyes . . . . and then, all at once, excitement overcame fear and split her face in a broad, sparkling grin. She looked up at Ralph, and in that brief moment he couldn't help but marvel proudly at how much she had changed from the shrinking, hysterical character who'd been too afraid to set foot outside of her own house just a couple short days ago.

Mike gave a fierce, confident nod and beamed at him with an exhilarated smile.

"Let's _do it!" _she whispered.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

An enormous, roaring cheer went up from the stands as Ralph, Mike, Felix and Calhoun made their way self-consciously to the middle of the racetrack, passing by Vanellope's kart and moving to stand beside the row of three taffy-tarp covered shapes. A team of candy track attendants hurried up and whipped each of the tarps away in practiced, fluid motions, folding them up and running away with them back to the pits, leaving the three unveiled karts gleaming expectantly in the sunlight.

It was obvious at an instant's glance which of the three karts were meant for whom. The first car was almost twice as large as those belonging to the Sugar Rush racers, and it had a sleek, intimidating design with two modern-looking tailfins spiking over the rear wheels. Every inch of the kart was a deep, gleaming black color save for the lime green of the windshield and the bright orange of the headlights, and it appeared to be constructed primarily from sheets of black licorice.

"Guess this is me," Calhoun muttered with some disdain, grumpily climbing into the kart and settling down heavily in the seat, awkwardly straightening her pencil skirt.

The second car was very similar to an average Sugar Rush candy-kart in both size and design. It had unfussy, cutely rounded front and rear hoods, and it was coated in a uniform layer of blue frosting with a white _FF _piped on either side. Felix gave the kart a warm, somewhat flattered smile before climbing in and leaning over to mutter something to Calhoun.

"Vanellope certainly _did _go to an awful lot of trouble," he commented, with a hint of admiration.

The moment the candy attendants had whirled the tarp off of the third kart parked in the guest line-up, Ralph realized immediately that he ought to have known - from its great size alone, if not from sheer common sense - that it would be none other than the orange, shining shape of the _Wreck-It Mobile _that appeared before him. A second later, however, his brow narrowed in a problematic frown.

"Uh . . . excuse me, Madam _President?" _he called, somewhat bitingly, over the others' heads to where Vanellope was adjusting her rear-view mirrors. "I think you forgot something. What is _Mike _supposed to drive?"

Vanellope looked up through her goggles, her face contorting and then bursting out in a gale of incredulous laughter.

_"Listen, _Ralph . . . " she giggled, softening her voice considerately. " . . . I know I set up this whole hoedown in honor of your girlfriend and all, but forgive me if I don't quite trust her behind the wheel of a kart just _yet. _No offense, Chickadee."

Mike just smiled and shook her head in oblivious agreement, but Ralph had abruptly forgotten what he'd even been talking about the moment Vanellope uttered the word _girlfriend. _He stood there on the track with one finger raised and his mouth hanging silently open, frozen in place as the two blunt syllables seemed to reverberate over and over in his ears.

_Girlfriend._

_Girlfriend._

_**Girlfriend**__._

_It wasn't the impact of the spoken word itself that left him speechless, so much as the sudden, flooring realization that absolutely nothing inside of him . . . . not even the innermost, most anxiously reserved and guarded part of his mind . . . . gave even the slightest response of protest to the statement._

_And what's more . . . . neither had Mike herself. _

_"So . . . " _Vanellope continued, smiling with pleasure at the obviously intentional effect her careful choice of words had achieved, " . . . I figured that for _this _race, anyway, Mike could just ride along with you in the _Wreck-It Mobile. _There sure is plenty enough _space _in there."

Ralph remained rooted in place as Mike let out a happy croon of approval and darted over to the side of the oversized orange kart, bouncing on her toes and running her hands admiringly over its smooth, hard candy sides. From somewhere nearby, a warning bull-horn sounded and the noise level of the crowd in the stands picked back up to a fever pitch.

_"Racers _. . . START YOUR ENGINES!" Vanellope shouted over her shoulder.

Instantly, the revving growl of fifteen candy-karts roared to life behind them, the Sugar Rush avatars having already waited just about as long as they could stand. The noise jolted Ralph out of his stupor, and he glanced back at the rows of fiercely rumbling cars. The nearest racer behind him, Rancis Fluggerbutter, caught his eye and shot him a competitive, intimidating smile.

Directly beside him, Calhoun and Felix had also started their engines, albeit a bit more timidly and experimentally than the others. Their karts growled and vibrated impatiently, and they shot each other shrugging looks of amusement.

"Come _on, _Ralph, _hurry! _The race is about to start!"

Ralph looked back toward the _Wreck-It Mobile, _where Mike was pinning him with an anxious stare and shifting eagerly from foot to foot. His heart beginning to pound nervously, but knowing there was nothing left for him to do now but give it his all and hope for the best, Ralph obediently climbed into his custom-built candy-kart and settled himself into the seat.

"Er . . . _okay_," he muttered thoughtfully, looking up and down the length of the car for a moment. "Mike . . . I guess the best place for you is going to be . . . _ah_ . . . "

He hesitated, and without waiting for him to finish, Mike jumped excitedly into the driver's pit alongside him and unceremoniously plunked herself down on the floor of the kart, hugging her knees to her chest and inching herself backward until she was wedged right into the small space between his feet, her head just reaching above the level of his knees. Once there, Mike wrapped one of her arms securely around each of his calves and tilted her head backwards to shoot him a satisfied smile.

"All set!" she declared brightly.

Ralph blinked dumbly down at her, his arms hovering at his sides and an instant bloom of heat reddening his cheeks. He swallowed down a throbbing heartbeat at the back of his throat, and like a deviously-timed automatic recording, Vanellope's voice played back again in his head . . .

_Your girlfriend. Your girlfriend. Your __**girlfriend**__._

The loop might have never stopped repeating itself, had it not been for the real, physical voice of Vanellope which shouted loudly at that moment and abruptly cut it off.

"Then without further ado, my fellow racers . . . . let the non-competitive BEGIN!"

The marshmallow hover-cams suddenly zoomed around to the back of the starting position, and Ralph's heart leapt into his mouth as the floating signal light lowered down above the finish line and began flashing its three-count warning. Every nerve in his body tensed up as he hunched over and lifted his arms, hovering them at the ready just above the ground as the other karts' engines revved excitedly all around them. Mike's grip tightened around his legs. The final signal bulb lit up with a bright green glow, and the small screen that floated beside it flashed three words in perfect sequence with the starting lights.

_Ready . . . ._

_Set . . . ._

_. . . . GO! _

A/N: So, yeah . . . lol . . . as you may have guessed, I used an English-to-Romaji translator for Mike's Japanese dialogue. If any of you happen to actually speak Japanese, you can probably see that those lines up there are almost just gibberish. Please to bear with it anyway. XP


	27. Chapter 26: Ready, Set, RUSH

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 26: Ready, Set, RUSH_

. . . . _GO!_

_VVVVRRRRNNNEEEOOW!_

The instant the green light and flashing letters lit up over the finish line, the waiting rumble of seventeen kart engines exploded simultaneously into a deafening roar of squealing tires and churning candy pistons.

His heart leaping into his mouth, Felix's gloved fingers tightened reflexively on his life-saver steering wheel, and as he jammed his foot awkwardly down on the gas pedal of his custom-made blue cookie-kart, the engine abruptly . . . . stalled. He jerked foreward with a sharp yelp of alarm and nearly had the wind knocked out of him against the steering column as the back wheels of his kart fish-tailed wildly, pealing out uselessly against the sugar-crusted pavement and sending up clouds of sweet-smelling fumes and dust. The other racers shot past him on both sides like volleys of bullet-fire, roaring across the finish line and zooming down the first leg of the track in colorful streaks.

Wincing and tensing up his shoulders until his rear wheels finally straightened themselves out, Felix shook himself and found the gas pedal with his foot again, depressing it cautiously at first and at last taking off onto the track at a moderate, puttering clip, already so far behind the other karts that he could no longer see them. After a couple dozen yards, he finally picked up some speed and zoomed along toward the first turn, accompanied by a light pity-cheer from the Assorted Fans section.

Felix glanced down nervously at his speedometer, puffing his cheeks full of air and then exhaling it again in a low, steadying breath. Vanellope had been kind enough build his guest kart with an automatic transmission, but even so, his driving skills were amateur at best. He'd only driven a Sugar Rush car - or any kind of car, for that matter - two or three times in his life ( on various group visits to the game throughout the past year, when Vanellope had impishly coerced them all into trying their hands at the unfamiliar game-play ), and none of those attempts had been particularly successful. Try as Vanellope might to convince him otherwise, he had gladly come to terms with the simple fact that some characters just didn't have it in their programming to learn how to race . . . and he was one of them.

As he approached the first turn that would lead him toward Gumball Gulch, Felix took another deep breath and settled himself down lower in the seat, easing his foot a fraction off the gas and focusing on keeping himself in the center of the track.

_Maybe . . . . maybe he would just sort of hang back, and let the others do the real competing. He would consider it a huge victory in itself if he only managed to get through the entire race without crashing._

_Besides, _he thought brightly to himself, smiling and sitting up a bit straighter in the kart . . . _if he purposefully took eighteenth place for himself, that would mean that no one else would have their feelings hurt by coming in last._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

. . . . _GO!_

_VVVVRRRRNNNEEEOOW!_

The roar of the other kart engines swelled up behind him like a tidal wave of sound as seventeen racers slammed their feet on the gas pedals and rocketed out of the starting position . . . but Ralph barely noticed them, almost forgetting that they were there the instant the green light flashed in his line of vision and triggered his arms into a rapid windmill, like a taut rubber-band being snapped loose. He didn't think . . . the second the race began, something like a nervous, spastic frenzy instantly overtook him, and his arms seemed to explode into motion under their own power and jolt the _Wreck-It Mobile _across the finish line and onto the track with one mighty pull of effort.

Mike let out a half-laughing, half-screaming cry of excitement - which, even in the midst of his sudden, inexplicable adrenaline rush, still sent an immensely pleased vibration shuddering through his torso - and hunched down lower to the floor of the kart, her hair whipping back and almost tickling his face. His hands pounded against the track on either side of them every few seconds, striking again and again with sugar-crunching blows as his arms wheeled them along faster and faster until he had built up enough momentum that his muscles were almost no longer engaged in the forward thrust, but rather just serving as directional rudders to veer the kart left and right.

They were already coming up to the first bend in the track, and as far as Ralph could make out from rapid, intermittent glances to either side, they were almost dead last in the pack. Having the advantage of actual engines just waiting for the slightest tap to shoot them out of the starting point at top speed, the others racers had naturally taken an early lead over the hand-powered _Wreck-It Mobile_ . . . . but now they were slowly beginning to close the gap, almost catching up with the second to last racer as they drew near to the entrance of Gumball Gulch.

Focusing all his energy into his arms and keeping his squinting eyes trained carefully on the track ahead, Ralph hunched down closer over the girl tucked between his feet.

"Hey Mike! Listen up!" he instructed, having to raise his voice almost to a shouting volume to make himself heard over the roar of the other karts, despite the fact that her head was only inches away from his. "If I'm the muscle in this kart, then you're gonna have to be the eyes! Can you see over the hood from down there?"

Mike listened to him with a wide-eyed stare of anticipation, then eagerly sat up straighter and cautiously loosened her grip on his legs so that she could crane her neck above the wheel-less dashboard. She squinted, then looked back at him and nodded fiercely.

"Just barely!" she shouted back, her small voice sounding much further away than it really was.

"Good enough!" Ralph barked, pausing and gritting his teeth as he abruptly slammed his right hand down on the track and dug his fingers in, banking their kart sharply around the first turn with a billowing spray of dust and sugar pebbles. They straightened out again, still in last place, but catching up fast. Ralph swallowed thickly when he glanced up ahead and saw the first few racers - Calhoun and Vanellope among them - already making the jump into Gumball Gulch, which he discovered, to his dismay, had evidently been kept active and in-motion, even though the race was non-competitive. Enormous, colorful gumballs were dropping into the smooth red valley, rolling up and down the canyon walls like perfectly spherical, two-ton billiard balls. Ralph forced his pounding heart back down into his chest and leaned down toward Mike again.

"Okay, _this is it! _Get ready . . . I need you to watch for gumballs and tell me when to bank!"

Without even the slightest hint of fear or apprehension marring her exhilarated grin, Mike obediently arched her neck and set her gaze firmly ahead of them at the rapidly approaching gulch. They zoomed closer and closer toward the off-ramp, and when they were just seconds away she let out a sudden growl of frustration.

"It's no good, I can't see well enough from down here!" she shouted, and before Ralph could answer her she had let go of her safety hold on his legs and risen wobblingly to her knees on the floor of the kart. His eyes bugging and his chest seizing suddenly in panic, Ralph struggled to keep his arms pumping and his eyes on the road as he darted rapid, incredulous glances down at her.

"What are you doing!?" he cried frantically. "Get back down before you fall out!"

"Don't worry about it!" she answered confidently, straightening up to the full height of her knees at the front of the driver's pit and gripping both hands firmly on the dashboard as she peered out towards the oncoming obstacles. "Just keep _racing!"_

Ralph was about to open his mouth to protest again, or to even dig both hands into the track and skid them to a stop right then and there - _no _date activity was worth it if it meant she'd be in any _real _danger, and in one flaring instant he felt like a complete moron for even agreeing to the dumb race in the first place - but before he could do anything, it was already too late. They were rocketing up the ramp, the last racers ahead of them already revving their engines in mid-air as they sailed over the gap and prepared to land.

The _Wreck-It Mobile _hit the edge of the ramp with a rapid speed-bump, zoomed up the short, steep incline, and was all at once totally air-borne, floating in dead silence as everything seemed to grind into slow motion for a few heart-pounding seconds. Somewhere underneath the deafening thunder of his own pulse, Ralph heard Mike whooping shrilly with excitement. Then, as they reached the highest point of their ascent, at the instant where gravity and momentum paused to let go for a split-second before changing directions, Ralph's heart skipped a beat when he glanced down and saw Mike's knees leaving the floor of the kart, her entire body - which weighed only a fraction of his - lifting several inches up into the air and hovering there dangerously as if the kart were about to fly out from under her the instant they began their descent.

Panic gripped him, and he acted without thinking.

_"Mike!"_

The nose of the kart suddenly dipped down as they began to drop, and Mike's elated yell faltered as she was just beginning to lose her grip on the dashboard, when Ralph shot one arm forward and closed his hand around her waist. He grabbed her and pulled her back down into the driver's pit with one wrenching motion, milliseconds before the front two wheels of their kart hit the red road of Gumball Gulch with a shuddering crash_, _and they were once again racing forward on level ground.

Mike's back hit Ralph flat in the chest at full tilt, the brunt of the impact jolting the breath from them both and making them _OOF _simultaneously. She fell squarely into his lap with a light _thud, _her hair whipping over his face and blinding him for one terrifying second until the wind blew it free again. As soon as she was seated over his knees with her back pressing into his stomach, Mike clumsily gripped the sides of his legs to steady herself, but Ralph had not even a split-second to think about it before he had to begin pedaling both arms again like mad just to keep them on all four wheels. Just ahead of them, the other karts were expertly swerving left and right to avoid the crushing path of the enormous gumballs, and some of the racers at the front of the pack had already hit the first line of booster bonuses.

Suddenly, Mike let out a short, piercing cry and shot one arm straight out in a frantic point. Ralph followed her hand from the corner of one eye and let out a sharp yelp as he caught a flashing glimpse of a yellow gumball bearing down on them from the left.

"_There!_ _SWERVE RIGHT!" _she screamed.

Growling with effort, Ralph kept pumping intermittently with his left hand while he let his right drag on the ground at half-pressure, veering their kart out of the gumball's path just as it rolled past not three feet behind them, the rumble of its crushing weight shaking the ground beneath the wheels of the kart. Mike's fingers dug into the side of Ralph's leg as her other hand jutted continually this way and that, pointing out impending hazards as they made their way haphazardly through the gulch.

"Swerve left! _Left! _Now right! Now straight!_ LEFT AGAIN!"_

"Lean! LEAN!" Ralph bellowed as a gumball came rolling toward them at an abrupt, diagonal angle he couldn't steer them around in time. He ground his left hand into the track for a split second to wrench them up onto two wheels, then wrapped his right arm around Mike to secure her in his lap and threw all of his weight to one side. The kart tilted sharply, skirting on the outer edges of the left wheels at a dangerously steep lean - his left hand grazing the track was the only thing that kept them from flipping over as the approaching gumball rolled past closely enough to scuff the bottoms of their right wheels.

With a grunting heave, Ralph threw himself back into the middle of the kart and righted them on all four wheels with a shivering _KRUNCH, _Mike bouncing a few times in his lap before clutching his legs again to steady herself. When she tossed the hair out of her eyes and saw that they had suddenly reached the end of the gulch and were coming up fast on the next section of track, she threw both hands up into the air and let out a long, wild whoop of exhilaration.

"Woooo_ooo-HA-HOOOOOO!" _she screamed, looking back briefly over her shoulder to flash Ralph a toothy, dazzling grin. "Ralph, we _did _it! Isn't this a_mazing? _I've never had so much fun in my entire life!"

If he hadn't been so busy keeping his eyes and hands glued to the road, Ralph would have stopped and given her the strangest cross-expression of disbelief and amusement he could muster . . . but as it was, Birthday-Cake Mountain was coming up on them fast, and not too far ahead, the first bonus boosts were being deployed amongst the other racers.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Letting her gaze drop down fleetingly from the road ahead of her to the now-flashing red button on her dashboard, Calhoun raised one eyebrow curiously and hesitated for a moment.

_Racing against these candy-coated crumb-snatchers was one thing, but . . . . did she really have the heart to actually fire at them with whatever kind of goofy weapon she'd just acquired by driving through that line of bonus cubes at the end of the gulch? Sure, she supposed they were plenty used to it and all, but . . . . still. It was the principle of the thing . . . she was an adult, and they were just a bunch of kids. Was it really defensible for her to . . . . ?_

But just at that moment, Calhoun's train of thought was abruptly derailed as her black-licorice kart was violently rear-ended, her back right wheel spinning out of control and her rear axle dovetailing with a vicious squeal_. _Her hair whipping over her eyes and her hands grappling fiercely with the steering wheel to straighten herself again, Calhoun clenched her teeth in an irritated growl and jerked her head up to see who had rammed her. Just beside her on the track, one of the racing avatars . . . . the hoity pink one, Taffyta-something-or-other . . . . shot Calhoun a sideways glance and removed the lollipop from her mouth just long enough to blow a deliberate, narrow-eyed raspberry at her before passing her and moving up into third place behind Vanellope and the kid with the rainbow afro.

Calhoun tensed her arm muscles on the steering wheel and blew the bangs out of her face, her brow darkening with a thick sneer.

"Alright then . . . _the heck with it," _she muttered under her breath - and punched her knuckles down on the red button.

Instantly, a jubilant announcer's voice blared out of nowhere.

_"CARAMEL CANNON!" _it declared enthusiastically.

The next second, Calhoun's kart gave a light jolt and she blinked with curiosity as a fat, militant-looking apparatus abruptly sprouted up like a daisy from the middle of her hood. Like magic, the tube promptly doubled in thickness and bent at a sharp angle in the middle, telescoping out into a long, black-licorice gun barrel and depositing the trigger directly over the windshield.

Calhoun blinked at it again, then cracked a broad, devilish smile. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel and shifting her kart momentarily into a lower gear, she settled her free hand on the trigger and hunched over to peer through the candy-cane crosshairs, adjusting the nose of the cannon for a few seconds until it was targeted directly at the pink racer who'd rammed her.

"Now _this, _is fun," Calhoun whispered to herself.

_Krink. _She squeezed the trigger.

_BBLLLAMM! _The instant she did, the cannon gave a hearty kick, and a thick blast of caramel syrup exploded from the barrel, arcing up into the air and then plummeting down directly down onto Taffyta's hot-pink kart. She barely had time to shriek in surprise before the deluge of thick, gooey confection coated her and her car completely and glued her wheels in place, spinning her out twice and then leaving her stuck to the track like a bug on fly-paper.

_"LOOKS LIKE __**YOU'VE**__ BEEN __**DIPPED**__!"_ the disembodied announcer voice crowed hilariously.

Calhoun sped past Taffyta's disabled kart just as three other racers drove through the streaks of caramel residue on the track and spun out themselves, two of them actually veering straight over the sidelines and plowing into hillsides of frosting and whipped cream. Calhoun glanced briefly over her shoulder at them, shaking her head and chuckling to herself as the cannon on the hood of her kart dematerialized and vanished.

_Okay . . . . she had to admit it. Maybe this game wasn't quite as dull and prissy as she'd always chided it for being. _

She and the other racers at the head of the pack were now rapidly approaching the first incline of Birthday-Cake Mountain, a towering behemoth of frosting and pastry with a narrow ribbon of track spiraling hazardously up to the top layer. Only a few yards ahead of her, Vanellope was skirting left and right behind the two racers who had managed to overtake her and were now hugging together in the center of the track, effectively blocking her in. They zoomed up the first hill at the bottom of the mountain, and Calhoun kept her high-heeled foot ( why, _why _had she bothered to wear dress shoes that night? ) floored somewhat uncomfortably on the gas pedal as she watched Vanellope swerve expertly to the inside of the bank and then unload her own bonus weapon on the first and second place racers at the exact right moment.

_"TOFFEE TORPEDO!"_

A blunt, cylindrical object, like an enormous bullet made entirely of dark hard candy, shot out of a fat launch cannon that had appeared on Vanellope's hood - it collided with the broad side of the first place racer's kart, exploding into a shower of toffee hailstones with such force that it sent both of them careening wildly in the opposite direction as the sharply banking turn. Both of them zoomed straight off of the road and went sailing down out of sight over the side of the mountain.

Calhoun whistled to herself as she drew up to a close second behind Vanellope, both of them carefully steering their karts up the cake spiral as they zoomed higher and higher above the sprawling landscape of the game. Her smile quirking with a sudden competitive streak, Calhoun cupped one hand beside her mouth and shouted up to Vanellope.

"Pretty brutal for a _princess!"_ she taunted, with a good-natured touch of amusement. "Didn't know you had it in you, pipsqueak!"

Vanellope looked back over her shoulder, and when her goggled eyes met with Calhoun's, her face spread wide with a devious grin.

"You think _that _was brutal?" she shouted back, her shrill voice rising to an even shriller pitch to be heard above the roar of their engines. "Then you're gonna love _THIS!"_

Without another second's hesitation, Vanellope revved her engine with a fierce, competitive growl and _glitched. _Calhoun started abruptly as both the kart and the little girl inside it flickered with an instantaneous flash of bright turquoise pixels and rippling waves of static, then vanished completely into thin air . . . only to reappear a split-second later, directly in front of her. Calhoun let out a sharp yell of alarm and wrenched her foot off the gas pedal, swerving her kart to avoid hitting the back of Vanellope's and being spun off the edge of the winding road. She grappled frantically with the wheel for a few seconds to regain her position, and when she did she heard the sound of Vanellope's cackling laughter rising above the sputter of her engine.

The faint streak of competitive spirit lurking behind her narrowing eyes instantly flared into a scorching blaze of determination, and she grit her teeth in a darkly chuckling, vicious grin of excitement as she floored the gas pedal and sped back up to Vanellope's other side, the two of them rapidly approaching the top tier of Birthday-Cake Mountain.

"How was that, old lady?" Vanellope joked with a puckish sideways glance. "Brutal enough for ya?"

"Alright, little Miss Muffet . . . " Calhoun growled back, unable to keep the growing note of pleasure from her voice as they each blasted through another line of bonus cubes. " . . . you wanna play rough? Let's _PLAY ROUGH."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Ralph, look out! Up ahead on the right . . . !"

"I see it," he answered firmly, his eyes veering in the direction Mike's arm was pointing and swerving their kart in a wide loop to avoid the section of track where what looked like the karts of Taffyta Mutton-fudge and Adorabeezle Winterpop were bogged down in an enormous smear of caramel. Two other racers had also skidded off the sidelines near the caramel spill, but they were speeding by too quickly for Ralph to see who they were.

"Wow!" Mike remarked with a hint of both wonder and concern, leaning over in Ralph's lap and craning her neck to look back as they continued forward toward the sloping ascent of Birthday-Cake Mountain. "I hope those little sweethearts are o_kay!"_

"They'll be fine, trust me," Ralph muttered between breaths. "It's _us _you oughta be worrying about . . . look up ahead!"

Mike obediently turned her gaze back to the stretch of road before him, where the pack of leading racers had broken into all-out attack mode, launching their bonus candy weapons in a frenzied melee on the dangerous slopes of the winding mountain track and knocking each other out of the race left and right. Mike clapped one hand briefly over her mouth with a sharp gasp of alarm as they watched several karts go flying straight off the mountainside, apparently landing with relative safety in the hills of pastel-colored frosting surrounding the base of the cake.

"My _good_ness! I wonder if Vanellope and the others are up there?"

Ralph smirked, in spite of the growing ache of over-exertion that was beginning to sting in his biceps and shoulders.

"If I know that little Cavity Queen, she's probably glitched herself to the finish-line already."

Mike sat up straighter on his legs and leaned forward, peering at the approaching mountainside and shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand.

"But I can't see any of them!"

"Don't worry_, _Mike_ . . . . _you just concentrate on _holding on!"_

By the time they reached the bottom of the spiraling mountain track and had careened up the first bank, the only racers visible in front of them were Torvald Batterbutter, Sticky Wipplesnit, and Candlehead . . . and judging by the way the three of them were veraciously swerving and side-swiping each other, Ralph guessed that they had to be some of, if not the, last remaining Sugar Rush avatars still in the race.

_Non-competitive, my foot! _he couldn't help sneering inwardly to himself. _These kids don't know the __**meaning **__of non -_

"WATCH OUT!"

"Huh!?" Ralph, who'd been focusing all his attention on keeping the _Wreck-It Mobile _banking continually on the inside curve of the spiral, jerked his head up to the stretch of track ahead of them, Mike's scream alerting him to the incoming missile just seconds before a blazing, glowing red shape the size of a cannon-ball went screaming past him, sailing inches next to his head and plowing into the wall of cake behind him with a quick, loud sizzle like a flame being extinguished. His brow glistening with panic sweat, Ralph sucked in a sharp gasp of relief and darted his eyes back ahead, struggling to look up and keep the kart centered at the same time.

"What was _that?" _Mike cried.

_"FIREBALL FLAMETHROWER!" _the booming announcer's voice called out on cue, as if answering her question. The sizzling cinnamon projectiles were coming from a rotating blaster that had popped up on the rear hood of Candlehead's kart just a few car-lengths ahead of them, and she still had two rounds left. Ralph hastily let his hands drag on the track for a few seconds to pull back away from the other racers. Candlehead fired again - the second shot was another near miss, but the third hit the side of Sticky's kart dead-on, exploding in a hot red flare and instantly melting its wheels. The kart skidded to an abrupt halt in the middle of the track, and Ralph's eyes bugged as he realized that they were racing toward it on a direct collision-course.

_"Ralph!" _Mike shouted frantically.

With the sound of her frightened voice rippling in his ears like a warning bell, instinct suddenly seized control of Ralph's brain, and his arms did the first thing that instinct screamed at them to do . . . . they jutted down and banked the kart in a grinding, reeling swerve around the roadblock toward the only section of track large enough to skirt by on . . . . the outer edge, that looked down over the steep, towering cliff-side of Birthday-Cake Mountain. It was only after he'd managed to weave them safely around Sticky's kart that Ralph realized they were headed straight for the edge of the track, and that they were going far too fast for him to brake or steer away in time.

His heart skipped a beat . . . his arms froze in midair, everything inside of him halting in a horrible instant of paralyzed shock . . . . and then, without any further noise or turbulence, the road abruptly disappeared from underneath them. For one still, almost calm moment, everything was dead silent as the _Wreck-It_ _Mobile _went sailing once more through the open air . . . . but this time, there was no road up ahead waiting to catch them. There was nothing but more air . . . . and below that, far, _far_ below, the hills of frosting and cream, floating equidistant for only a few precious seconds before slowly rising up to meet them as they began their downward dive.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Felix had discovered that by slowing his kart down to a relaxed putter, rather than barreling along at top speed, he could weave his way around the steadily rolling gumballs in the gulch with relative ease. He had barely kept up enough momentum to make it over the ramp leaping into the canyon, but as soon as he had made it inside he veritably slammed on the brakes and came to a complete stop, waiting for his pounding pulse to slow down before cautiously tapping the gas again and proceeding slowly through the gulch.

_No doubt about it . . . . he just wasn't programmed for this kind of excitement!_

Taking his time, Felix made it through the treacherous gulch and onto the next straight jog of track without incident . . . but once there, he looked up ahead to his next oncoming obstacle and saw something that made his hands abruptly freeze on the wheel, his eyes bugging and his jaw dropping in horror.

Far ahead of him, just above the midway point of the tightly winding road that spiraled up the height of Birthday-Cake Mountain, he saw one of the karts careen straight over the edge of the cliff at top velocity, sailing out in a wide arc high above the candy landscape. Felix had watched races in Sugar Rush before, and he knew that such mishaps were commonplace enough that normally, it wouldn't cause him any real concern . . . . but this time, it wasn't one of the fifteen Sugar Rush avatars he had spotted flying off of the looming precipice in the distance.

This kart was too big to be one of the Sugar Rush avatars. And distant though it was, if he squinted . . . Felix could just make out the unique orange color of the kart, glaring brightly in the sunlight, and the silhouetted shape of the figure inside it, too large and distinct to be mistaken even momentarily for anyone else.

"RALPH! _MIKE!_" Felix cried out involuntarily, gasping in horror.

Panic seizing him and instantly erasing any apprehensions about driving from his mind, Felix immediately slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and rocketed away down the track, leaning low over his windshield and shooting continual frantic glances up into the sky as he sped toward the mountain. After a few seconds, he realized with a cold jolt that he couldn't see them anymore. They had flown out of his line of vision somewhere behind the towering birthday cake, or beneath the horizon of the steep frosting hills that jutted up abruptly near the base of the spire.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Someone was yelling, and Ralph realized that it was him. The wind was whipping his hair back and whistling deafeningly in his ears . . . everything went semi-weightless, and without ceasing his stream of terrified bellowing, Ralph gripped the side of the kart with one hand and clutched Michelangela against his chest with the other, squeezing his eyes shut and bracing himself for the inevitable impact . . . .

. . . . when suddenly, he realized that Mike was shouting something at him. Her words came out in a garbled cry that was lost indiscernibly in the rushing wind, and Ralph quickly opened his eyes again and looked down at her. Her eyes were wide, but blazing with a live, churning spark of _thought_, rather than the fear he'd been expecting. She cupped both hands around her mouth and screamed, so clearly and directly that he couldn't possibly mistake her words.

_"HOLD ME UP IN THE AIR!"_

Ralph had no idea what she could possibly be thinking, but at that instant everything was happening too fast and too frighteningly for him to question her . . . or to even pause for a single instant before obeying her. Keeping his vice-like grip on the kart with one hand, Ralph quickly wrapped the other firmly around Mike's waist and, with a growling burst of effort against their rapidly increasing momentum, thrust her straight up over his head and held her there, wavering in the air like a javelin with her long hair whipping straight out and over her forehead like a flag in a windstorm.

Ralph watched - squinting up at her through one eye, and struggling against the rushing wind to keep his grasp around her middle without crushing her - as Mike reached into the neck of her smock, wrenched out the long, familiar shape of her Battle-strokes paintbrush, reared it once back behind her head, and then cast it . . . almost as if it were a fly-fishing rod . . . in one violent, desperate stroke toward the shrinking peak of the cake mountain.

A streak of bright, brilliant yellow paint shot out instantly from the tip of the brush and flew through the air like a lightning bolt, picking up speed as it rocketed off into the distance and quickly became too small for the eye to follow.

There was a full, slow second of dead, agonizing silence.

Then . . . with a faint, distant noise almost too soft to make out . . . . the end of the brush-stroke made contact with the mountainside and burrowed deep into its cake wall, securing like a grappling hook and snapping into a taut, straight line with such force that it almost tore the brush out Mike's hands, and in turn her body out of Ralph's hand. They both cried out with the grueling effort of holding on as the velocity of their downward plummet suddenly halted and changed directions . . . . the ground abruptly stopped rushing up at them, and in the blink of an eye was now swaying wildly beneath them as they swung from the anchored paint line like a nine-hundred-pound pendulum, _Wreck-It Mobile_ and all.

The world was spinning rapidly around them . . . . Ralph could feel every muscle in Mike's small body tensing to its maximum endurance as she gripped the brush, the disproportionate strength of the tether line the only thing keeping her arms from popping clean out of their sockets as they reeled around Birthday-Cake mountain in an enormous, swooping radius. As soon as they had swung nearly a three-quarter circle from where they'd flown off the track, Mike let out a ragged, gasping cry of effort and suddenly gave the paintbrush a stiff, diagonal jerk . . . . the streak of yellow paint snapped off the bristles like a line being cut, going limp and falling down toward the earth as the _Wreck-It Mobile _and its passengers went sailing freely through the air again.

His brain still reeling with too much shock and adrenaline to fully process what was happening, Ralph reflexively pulled Mike back down into the kart, and she immediately wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his torso, clamping down and clinging to him tighter than an octopus. The instant he was sure she was secure, Ralph let go of her and gripped the sides of the kart with both hands, clenching his teeth and fighting to keep it flatly underneath them as they arced across the sky.

"What _now?" _he cried helplessly, and Mike peeled her face out of the crook of his neck just long enough to look out over the nose of the kart and thrust one arm back in a wavering gesture.

_"There!" _she shouted, pointing ahead at the next section of track immediately following the jump from the highest peak of Birthday-Cake mountain . . . . a steep, downward rolling ramp, directly toward which they were swiftly hurtling.

For one last, lingering moment . . . silent, save for the wind rushing past his ears . . . Ralph clung to the airborne kart and simply stared, widening his eyes at the rapidly, inevitably approaching ramp. Then, when they were just a few seconds away from landing - or _crashing, _depending on what fate had in store - he did the only thing there was left to do . . . . squeeze his eyes shut, push his face down into the fluttering wall of Mike's hair, and brace for impact.

_KKKKKRRRSSHSHEEEOW!_

The front two wheels of the _Wreck-It Mobile _hit the sugar-crystal pavement at a ludicrous trajectory, practically nose-diving front-bumper-first into the track with a crunching, deafening blow. It skidded forward on its front wheels for a moment, then the rear wheels came slamming down after them, and the entire kart, passengers and all, bounced three times before finally clattering back onto all four wheels and zooming down the new section of track with so much added velocity that Ralph's arms were momentarily stung by the flecks of sugar grit thrown up by their front wheels.

As soon as he realized that they were both still alive and that the kart was not only in one piece, but still actively racing along the track, Ralph's eyes shot open, and he fumbled for a few seconds to disentangle his arms ( at some point in the landing, he had let go of the kart completely and thrown them around Michelangela, squeezing her into him so tightly that it was a miracle he hadn't broken her ribs ) and punch his hands down on either side of the _Wreck-It Mobile, _veering dangerously back and forth a few times before regaining control and steering it carefully down the center of the track.

For a few seconds, everything was abruptly calm again. They were on the straight stretch of road leading them up to the ice-cream mountain range, and there wasn't another racer in sight, either in front of or behind them. Torvald and Candlehead must not have made it over the jump from the top tier of the birthday cake . . . and if there were any racers still left up ahead of them, they had to have been so far ahead that the distant rumble of their engines couldn't even be heard anymore.

As their gravitational momentum slowly began to decrease, Ralph started pedaling with his arms again, staring straight ahead in a dazed stupor. For the moment, he was too shell-shocked to think about anything but the welcome, repetitive physical task of keeping their kart moving forward along the track. After a short moment of relative quiet, Mike slowly loosened her death-grip around Ralph's neck and peeked out over her shoulder.

She was silent for another second . . . . then, with a breathless, jubilant cry of victory, she burst into a fit of laughter and let go of Ralph long enough to crawl clumsily around his side and under his arm to the rear hood of the _Wreck-It Mobile. _Once there, she stood up behind him with her feet flat on the trunk and one arm clasped securely over his shoulder, holding onto him for stability and balance as she shifted and swayed with the motion of the kart. Her Battle-strokes brush was still clamped tightly in her other hand, her knuckles white from gripping it for so long. Ralph was still too thunderstruck to talk to her, or even look back at her, as she gave another elated, gasping cry of laughter and pointed the tip of her brush forward toward the ice-cream mountains.

"Keep going, Ralph!" she urged him excitedly, evidently having required no more than a few seconds to shake off any trace of shock or fear from their near-death experience. "We're doing _great!"_

Ralph . . . . his face utterly blank, and his eyes fixed wide and unblinking on the few feet of track continually eclipsing beneath the hood of the kart . . . . said nothing.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Compared to the hazards of Gumball Gulch and Birthday-Cake Mountain, the short, frozen pass leading through the ice-cream mountain range to the Rainbow Cave was a relatively tame and uneventful stretch of track, with only one line of bonus cubes positioned right at the beginning. Normally, racers used this snowy jog as a bit of a breather before the final leg of the race, and it was something of an unwritten rule of professional courtesy not to get _too_ aggressive on the slippery road.

_Normally._

"Comin' up behind ya, _pipsqueak!"_

KRUNCH!

Vanellope jerked forward in her seat as Calhoun abruptly rammed her from behind, grinding into her rear cookie fender and making her back wheels skid wildly on the iced-over track. Vanellope shot her a steely look over her shoulder, and their eyes met with a competitive chill. Flakes of vanilla ice-cream snow were drifting down around them on the almost deserted road . . . . all of the other Sugar Rush avatars had been knocked out of the running already, and she'd seen neither hide nor hair of either Ralph and Mike _or _Felix since the beginning of the race.

_It was just between her, and Calhoun._

Vanellope wrestled with her steering wheel for a few seconds, spinning it sharply to the side and finally wrenching her kart free from Calhoun's front fender. The second she was on all four wheels again, she tightened her grip, squeezed her eyes shut and glitched. The world around her broke into pieces and vanished into an empty blackness that only lasted for the instantaneous millisecond in which her code was scattered into invisible fragments and went shooting through the void in between the very fabrics of time and space calibrated into the game . . . then, like a light-switch flipping the world back on, everything zipped into place again and she had reappeared, along with her kart, a good ten car-lengths ahead of Calhoun.

"Cheap shot, girly!" the sergeant shouted fiercely from behind, the laughter in her voice betraying her feigned irritation.

Giggling along with her, Vanellope stuck her tongue out over her shoulder and shifted her kart into high-gear as they came to the end of the ice-cream pass and were fast approaching the mouth of the tunnel leading into Rainbow Cave.

"Cheap . . . but _effective!" _Vanellope jeered back. "Face it, lady . . . . you may be top dog in Hero's Duty, but when it comes to racing, _nobody _gets the better of Vanellope Von - "

_TTTSSZZZING!_

_SSNAP._

" . . . . Schweetz!?" Vanellope's voice halted and trailed off in a confused stutter, her kart wavering once dangerously and almost running into the side of the glittering arch of the Rainbow Cave tunnel.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, something bright and lightning-quick had darted through the periphery of her vision . . . . there was a whistling zing, almost like the sound of an arrow being fired, followed by a sharp _snap _like the cracking of a whip, and when Vanellope looked up ahead of her, she almost did a double take, wondering if she was seeing correctly or if something had gotten smudged on the lenses of her goggles.

Wrapped around the downward-jutting peak of one of the larger stalactites just within the entrance to the Rainbow Cave, and shooting straight back through the opening, was what looked like a bright crimson lasso, stretched taut and quivering as if something was pulling on it fiercely from somewhere behind her. Vanellope narrowed her eyes quizzically at it as she zoomed by, and for a split-second she thought there was something unidentifiably strange about the way it looked . . . but before she could put her finger on what it was, she had already shot past the stalactite and was forced to keep her attention forward as she went barreling down the glittering rainbow road.

"Hey Calhoun!" she shouted loudly over her shoulder, without letting her eyes leave the track in front of her. "Did _you_ just do that?"

There was no answer. Setting her hands firmly on the wheel, Vanellope eased her foot a slight fraction off the gas pedal and allowed herself one rapid, backward glance at the stretch of track behind her.

"Calhoun? Are you still . . . . _YIKES!"_

Vanellope's eyes bugged wide, and she immediately slammed her foot back down on the gas, her kart lurching forward and swerving haphazardly. When she had turned around, it wasn't the distant, dark shape of Calhoun's licorice kart that was following behind her . . . . it was the hulking, double-wide orange enormity of the _Wreck-It Mobile, _barreling down the narrow rainbow track so quickly that Vanellope barely had time to veer out of the way as it went charging past on her left. The instant it moved ahead of her, Vanellope discovered all at once where the bizarre red rope had come from, and why it had looked so strange.

It wasn't a rope at all . . . . it was a _brushstroke, _a floating line of solid paint, shooting out of the bristles of a thick, oversized paintbrush gripped in Mike's hands as she went zooming by on the back hood of the _Wreck-It Mobile_, bracing herself on Ralph's shoulders as he pedaled the kart wildly with his arms. They didn't so much as glance back as they passed her, Mike using the retracting brushstroke line to pull them forward with an added boost of velocity. The paint streak snapped off of the hardy-candy stalactite and fell down like a limp red worm the moment Mike severed it from the end of her brush. Vanellope watched, momentarily speechless, as they rocketed ahead of her towards the first plummeting drop of the rainbow track.

The sound of Calhoun's engine roaring up behind her after a few seconds broke her from her reverie.

"Did you _see _that?" the sergeant crowed with a disbelieving grin as he kart sped up and hovered alongside Vanellope's. "That glorified garbage truck went off like a _slingshot! _They just popped up out of nowhere!_"_

Vanellope's eyes narrowed, her moment of stunned silence giving way to a fresh, overpowering surge of competitive determination. She shot Calhoun a dark look, all of the whimsy and fun of the race suddenly vanishing in the wake of her uncharacteristic blaze of indignation.

"We'll see who _pops up out of nowhere," _she muttered, and without waiting for Calhoun to answer, she hunched her shoulders and gave a fierce, shuddering _glitch. _

The world scrambled and darkened, then blinked and reassembled again, and Vanellope found herself jolting back onto the road at the bottom of the steep rainbow incline, trailing behind Mike and Ralph by a half-dozen kart lengths. She set her jaw and glitched again, then again, finally reappearing directly in front of them and concealing a satisfied smirk when she heard Mike's abrupt cry of surprise, followed by the grating shriek of their wheels as they skidded slightly off balance.

"Watch it, kid!" Ralph's voice sounded angrily from behind her. Vanellope tossed them an innocent glance over her shoulder and smiled.

"Sorry, _lovebirds . . . . _didn't see ya there!" she chuckled, turning her eyes triumphantly back to the road and flooring her kart with one last jubilant blast of speed as she came bursting out of the end of the Rainbow Cave and into the blaring sunshine once more, the last short leg of the race lying straight and empty ahead of her. The moment she came to the final stretch of track and the golden, sparkling arch of the finish line rose gleaming into view, a distant, raucous cheer erupted from the stands of candy citizens.

Vanellope grinned victoriously, zooming down the straight shot to the golden arch with the same elated, soaring sensation that she got every time she knew a first-place win was in the bag . . . . she was almost there, she could see the screen of the Jumbo-tron now, the camera trained squarely on her as her kart barreled totally unchallenged toward the finish line.

Almost there . . . . _almost there . . . . _

Then, when she was just seconds away from crossing the finish line, she heard it . . . . a light, shuddering _thump_, accompanied by a sharp jolt that rippled and shook the frame of her kart as if she'd hit a deep divot in the road. Vanellope jerked her head around in the direction of the noise, and her exultant smile instantly vanished when she saw a streak of green paint wrapped around the cookie spoiler on her back hood. She followed the line of paint with her eyes and saw Ralph and Mike bearing down on her from behind, Mike reaching over Ralph's shoulders with both arms tightly gripping her brush and rapidly closing the gap between their karts, slowing Vanellope down as she reeled in the paint lasso like a fish line. Within a second they were flush up behind her, the hard-candy front bumper of their kart nudging her rear fender, and when she shot an incredulous glare up at Ralph, he ceased his manic arm-pedaling and simply smiled back at her with a good-natured shrug.

"Sorry, sugar-cube . . . . _didn't see ya there!"_

An unexpected flush of anger suddenly boiling up inside of her, Vanellope wrenched the steering wheel of her kart in a deliberate spin-out and glitched at the same time.

She disappeared . . . . only to discover abruptly that she'd made the mistake of glitching without a specific destination clearly pinpointed in her mind beforehand. When the world zipped back instantaneously around her, everything was spinning . . . spinning so violently she could barely open her eyes. She gritted her teeth against the shuddering G-force and tightened her hands on her steering-wheel, forcing herself to crack one eye open and peer out at the blur of colors whirling all around her in a half-blind maelstrom.

Her kart and the _Wreck-It Mobile _were locked together in a reeling double tail-spin, their bumpers hitched and tangled up with a knotted streak of paint that was gradually disintegrating and splattering her goggles with green. Vanellope freed one hand from the steering wheel and shoved her now blind goggles up onto her forehead, just in time to catch a single garbled glimpse of Ralph and Mike's reeling faces before their spinning karts were abruptly T-boned by a third car.

_CCKKRRASSH!_

The spinning stopped with a sharp, jerking impact and a deafening crunch of candy and cookie fenders crinkling against each other . . . . then, Vanellope felt herself flying out of the driver's seat and sailing through the air for a few seconds of stunned silence before landing, with a bouncing, skidding _oof! _flat on her rear end on the rough, sugar-crystal pavement of the racing track.

She sat up and opened her eyes, but everything in her vision was still waltzing dizzily, and she heard and felt rather than saw the similar impacts of three other bodies . . . one small, one medium, and one _huge . . . _as they landed in a jumbled heap on the ground beside her.

The cheering in the stands had abruptly gone silent.

Vanellope squinted her eyes and groaned, holding her forehead with one hand as she desperately willed away the dizziness . . . after a short moment, when everything finally stopped swimming and she was able to muster the wherewithal to look up and open her eyes, the first thing she saw was the twisted wreckage of three candy-karts . . . . hers, Calhoun's, and Ralph's . . . . all of them splattered with green paint and crushed together in a gnarled heap in the middle of the track, just a few paces short of the finish line.

Vanellope blinked, and turned her head towards the faint sounds of groaning directly beside her. There, she saw Ralph, Calhoun, and Mike, sprawled out on the pavement in one tangled pile of limbs of enormous hands . . . Ralph was lying flat on his back at the bottom of the heap, blinking upside down at Vanellope, with Mike draped crossways over his stomach - her face completely hidden beneath the wild, tangled bush of her hair - and Calhoun lying on top, wincing and trying to extricate her hand from between Ralph's right arm and the ground. When the three of them finally pried themselves apart enough to be able to look up and meet Vanellope's gaze, they all sat and stared at each other in dumbfounded silence for one long, awkward moment.

Then . . . . rising up ever so faintly in the distance, growing slowly but steadily louder with each passing second . . . . came the soft rumble of another kart engine, drawing gradually nearer and nearer to them in their crumpled heap just before the checkered goal-line. Vanellope, Ralph, Calhoun and Mike all turned their heads simultaneously toward the approaching sound . . . .

. . . . and saw Felix, humming along in his small blue kart - without so much as a single scratch on the frosting finish - down the last stretch of open track.

Felix slowed his kart to a careful, puttering chug, crossed the finish line, and came to a gentle stop just on the other side. The moment his engine fell silent, the candy citizens in the stands all jumped to their feet and exploded in an hysterical cheer. The Jumbo-tron lit up brightly with Felix's picture, and the victorious trumpet fanfare blasted through the speakers from every corner of the Royal Raceway square . . . . but the small, anxious-looking superintendent was apparently deaf to all of it. His face writ stressfully with a wide-eyed combination of concern, confusion, and relief, Felix fumbled with the door of his kart for a moment, then hastily clambered out, and without so much as looking back or glancing up once at the stands full of candy citizens raucously cheering for him, hopped over to where the four of them were still sitting on the ground in utterly flabbergasted shambles, staring at him silently with their mouths open.

"Oh, my _land!" _Felix gasped, taking his cap off and clapping one hand to his chest. "Am I glad to see all of _you _in one piece! . . . . Ralph, Mike, I thought the two of you were _goners _for _sure . . . . _and honeymuffin! I lost sight of you as soon as the race _started . . . . _are you alright, sweetheart? Did everything go okay?"

Calhoun blinked wordlessly back at him, her brow narrowing and one eye squinting in a gape of disbelief.

Felix looked obliviously back and forth between their speechless faces for a moment, then turned and scanned his eyes around the almost empty track.

"What . . . what happened to your _karts?"_ he asked with a light-hearted chuckle. "You four get into a bit of a tussle at the end, there? . . . And where are all of the other Sugar Rush racers?"

When they didn't answer him, Felix looked back at them perplexedly for a moment . . . then shrugged, his eyebrows raising innocently in a clueless expression of genuine curiosity.

"_So?_" he urged. "Don't keep me in suspense, guys! Who won the race?"


	28. Chapter 27: Out of the Frying Pan

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 27: Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fight Club_

"Oh, ho _ho . . . ._ man _alive, _honey . . . . if you could have only seen your _face _when that Jumbo-tron called your name . . . !"

The sound of Calhoun's deep-throated laughter - mingling with the bursts of hysterical giggling from the others, and the combined patter of five pairs of footsteps - echoed off the walls of the Sugar Rush tunnel as the group made their way leisurely back to Game Central Station.

Felix blushed and bashfully pulled the brim of his hat down a bit lower over his forehead, but he was grinning from ear to ear nonetheless. Calhoun punctuated her comment with a loving shove on his shoulder, and Vanellope and Ralph chimed in with teasing cat-calls. Mike, squeezed in the middle of the pack between Ralph and Calhoun, was content to remain silent and simply drink in the novel wonder of being with her new friends. She had never in her life spent this much time with this many people all at once, never before found herself in the midst of a real, honest chorus of conversation in which she didn't have to take part, but could just slip in and listen to . . . . it was both invigorating, and almost a little disorienting. Mike unconsciously inched a bit closer to Ralph and smiled at the continuing volley of their banter, her eyes darting back and forth between their cheerful faces with a thrilled sense of fascination as they walked.

"Well, can you _blame _me?" Felix tossed back at them, shrugging with a good-natured laugh. "I thought the race was long over by the time I got there. I would have never in a _million years _thought that I'd actually come in _first!"_

Vanellope blew a puff of air through her lips and cackled from her perch on Ralph's shoulder, balancing herself with one hand on his head as he lumbered along.

"Beginner's _luck, _Hammer-man! Just wait until next time . . . I'll out-zip every one of you amateurs so fast, your _binary _will spin."

"I don't know, kid . . . " Ralph teased her in a dubious tone, shooting Mike a furtive, sideways wink that made her stomach jump with a tiny spasm of glee. " . . . for a bunch of _amateurs, _I think we gave you a pretty good run for your money. You may have some real competition in the next _'non-competitive.'_"

Calhoun and Felix chuckled and shook their heads dismissively, but Vanellope narrowed her eyes and pointed her gaze deliberately away from them all. Mike's broad smile flickered when she noticed an almost imperceptible chill hardening the little girl's normally bright and energetic demeanor.

"Yeah . . . well . . . maybe if some people hadn't been _cheating," _she muttered suggestively.

Ralph shot her an incredulous look from the corner of his eyes.

_"_What!? You've got the nerve to call _us _cheaters, just because of a little quick _brushwork? _When _you_ spent the whole race glitching yourself into the lead?"

"My glitch is a super power that's _part of me, _Chucklehead . . . like Calhoun's reflexes, or your big, sweaty _gorilla arms . . . . _but that _paintbrush _is just a fancy toy! You don't bring a jawbreaker to a marshmallow fight, and you don't use gimmickyoutside weaponsin a kart-race!"

Without warning, Vanellope's shrill tone had suddenly developed a bitter sting to it that made Mike's wavering smile fail altogether. An anxious feeling began to knot up in her chest, and it only worsened when Ralph returned Vanellope's snapping with an indignant growl of his own.

"Listen, madam _President!" _he barked cuttingly, plucking the little girl off his shoulder with two fingers and dropping her back on the ground. The little group had quietly halted its progress down the Sugar Rush tunnel. "If it weren't for Mike and her 'fancy toy,' she and I would be nothing but a pair of busted _cake toppers _on the side of a mountain right now, all because of _your _stupid little race!"

"Oh, for the love of . . . . quit your _whining, _you big baby!" Vanellope retorted, rolling her eyes insultingly. "We racers fly off of Birthday-Cake Mountain all the time, and do any of _us _get squashed in the landing? That whole section of track is nothing but frosting and whipped cream! The worst you and Mike would have gotten out of it is _last place . . . . _not that it would have made any difference, because in _my _game, _cheaters _are _disqualified!" _

"Oh yeah?" Ralph snarled, the volume of his voice rising to an even more perturbing level in the confined, resonant space. "Well at least in _my game, _we don't have to weasel our way to the top by using a cheap _glitch!"_

Calhoun and Felix had gone awkwardly stone silent behind her, and Mike's anxious expression deepened into a furrowed, distressed frown of confusion as her hands began to fist in the hem of her smock. She had never heard Ralph talk that way before, and something inside of her almost recoiled at the sudden anger and hostility darkening his voice.

_What was happening?_

_They'd all been so happy just a few seconds ago . . . . why had things suddenly gone wrong? _

_Was it her fault? _

"G . . . guys?" her voice squeaked out timidly in between their bickering jabs, and they stopped abruptly in mid-squall to turn and look at her. Mike's jaw hovered quietly for a short moment, her voice catching in her throat with a new kind of apprehension she was experiencing for the first time. "I . . . . I'm sorry if I ruined the race. I didn't mean to _cheat, _I . . . I just thought - "

"No!" Ralph cut her off sharply, making her jump. "Don't you apologize to her! You didn't do anything wrong!"

"Oh, for the love of _Pete!" _Calhoun's exasperated voice cut in sharply, silencing them all with a stern look. "Can we all just _drop it _already? Come on, Wreck-It, who's the child here?"

Ralph glared back at her sullenly, but didn't say anything. Vanellope crossed her arms in a huff and looked away. There were a few seconds of stilted silence . . . then, Felix cleared his throat and tried to speak up in a cheerful tone.

"Ah . . . yeah, c-come on, gang! I think that's the light of the station I see up ahead . . . we don't want to waste a beautiful Saturday night squabbling, do we? It's Mike's turn to pick a game to visit!"

Vanellope grumbled something under her breath, but it was too quiet and garbled to make out. Mike's brow knit further with unease, but Ralph quickly moved beside her and took her hand in his, squeezing it reassuringly. The warmth of his touch and the nearness of his protective bulk helped to soothe her perturbation . . . _slightly_ . . . but she still couldn't help craning her neck to point a few more guilty, unsettled glances at Vanellope's down-turned face as they walked the remaining length of the tunnel and came out at last in the gray light of the Sugar Rush anteroom.

However, as soon as they stepped back out into the enormous, noisy hall of Game Central Station, the mere sight of the crowd that greeted them was almost enough to make Mike abruptly forget all about her nagging uncertainty. Her mouth opened silently as they passed beneath the Sugar Rush archway and moved out into the midst of the bustling throng of characters, her head turning slowly from right to left in a mesmerized panorama. There hadn't been nearly _half _as many people in the station when they'd entered Vanellope's game . . . . there were so many now that she almost became light-headed just trying to look at them all. There were characters of every size and shape imaginable, every color and style and height and width . . . . there were animals and monsters as well as people, and some creatures she wasn't even able to put a name to. The cavernous walls of the room were ringing with the sounds of their chatter and footsteps as they moved in slow, milling rivers of foot traffic up and down each aisle of the station.

When he looked up and saw how densely crowded the place was, Ralph's irritated scowl quickly dropped into a wide-eyed look of surprise, and Mike felt his hand tighten around hers as he gently pulled her a few inches closer to his side.

_"Look _at this place!" he remarked out loud, his disdainful expression matching those of the others as they all looked about the station in different directions. "The whole arcade must be out tonight! Didn't the surge protectors ask people to keep travel to a _minimum?"_

Vanellope rolled her eyes at him.

"Yeah, and look how well _we're _listening to them," she quipped sarcastically, momentarily drawing out a fraction of his glare again.

_"Jaminy_ . . . . I guess everyone must be out celebrating the end of the lockdown," Felix added with a shrug.

"You know how this arcade loves an excuse to party," Calhoun snorted lightly with amusement, then turned to look at Mike, who was still silently captivated with the surreal menagerie milling all around them. "Well? Let's keep this harebrained train a'rollin', kiddo. Where do you want to go next?"

Mike started lightly, blinking out of her fascinated daze and looking back at each of the others in turn.

"Where do _I _want to go?" she parroted, exhilaration quickly rising back up inside her and pushing away the last trace of worry from her thoughts. "Well _gee, _I . . . I don't know. I don't really know anything about the arcade yet . . . . "

_"No kidding," _Vanellope muttered just audibly under her breath, but Mike was too enthralled to give it any thought. She slipped her hand out of Ralph's and took a few steps further into the aisle, turning around in slow circles and scanning the titles of the games nearby, mouthing them silently with her lips as she read.

_BurgerTime, Tapper's, Paperboy, Pac-man . . . . _they all sounded intriguing, but none of them offered any more insight than the next as to which she should choose for their next destination. Mike bit her lip thoughtfully and turned back to the group. She caught Calhoun's eye and tossed off the first question she could think of.

"Well . . . what about _your _game?" she tried. "What is _it _like?"

Calhoun's eyes widened slightly, and she exchanged glances with Felix and Ralph, the latter of whom immediately began to shake his head with an almost frantic expression. Mike puckered her brow perplexedly.

"Aahhh . . . . you don't want to go to my game, Mike," the tall, blonde woman answered definitively, shifting her eyes sideways. "There's, uh . . . . not really anything _fun _to do in Hero's Duty."

Mike's shoulders sagged slightly and she held her chin with her hand, wondering if she ought to just pick a gate at random . . . then, an abrupt quirk of memory came rushing back to her, and she turned to look at Ralph, her face lighting up.

"Of _course!" _she exclaimed, tapping herself dumbly on the forehead. "How could I forget? I'm dying to see _your _game, Ralph! Please, let's go to Fix-It Felix J- "

But before she could finish saying the name of Ralph's game, her voice was cut off and the wind was suddenly knocked out of her with a heavy shove from behind as someone large and sturdy walked straight into her, knocking her down flat on the smooth station floor.

_"Hey!" _came Ralph's voice, sharp and indignant, as he hurried to her side. "Watch where you're going there_, _pal!"

Mike shook her head to dispel the quick swirl of dizziness and looked up, blinking with curiosity as Ralph crouched over and helped her back to her feet, holding out his hands for her to brace herself on. Mike took his hand and stood up with looking at him, her gaze fixed quizzically instead on the tall, odd figure in front of her whose entire upper half was obscured from view by the gigantic wooden crate he was carrying.

The person started in surprise for a moment, then gave a quick growl of effort and shifted the huge box in his thick-fingered hands and hoisted it up over one shoulder. Mike blinked again, her eyes quickly traveling once up and down the queer-looking man in front of her. He was at least seven feet tall, and she raised one eyebrow as she abruptly realized that save for his boots, some wristbands, and what looked like a pair of crimson briefs, he was entirely naked. His limbs and torso were thick with cut, bulging muscles, and both his face and body sported strangely shaped patches of dense, tufted brown hair. As soon as he moved aside the large crate he was carrying and saw Ralph standing in front of him, the man's bearded face split with an enormous, open-mouthed grin. He held out his free arm in a gesture of greeting and made a loud, jovial roaring noise that Mike took to be a pleased sign of surprise.

Ralph blinked with astonishment and let go of her hands, standing up straighter.

"Zangief!"

"Eeeeehh, he-he-_HEEYYY!" _the burly man roared again, dropping his wooden crate on the floor with a rattling _thud _and grabbing Ralph by both shoulders, shaking him happily a few times. "Look who it is, my favorite _wrecking man! _Ralph, so good to see you on this fine . . . ._"_

Vanellope, Calhoun and Felix had moved across the aisle to stand near them and were looking on with curious expressions, and when the man named Zangief noticed them there, he stopped what he was saying and let out a hearty laugh.

"Ha _ha! _And I see you are with your friends . . . Fixing Man, Army Wife, and tiny candy child! Wonderful evening to all of you . . . . but please, Wrecking Man. I am afraid Zangief is unacquainted with _this_ little rosebud, Big-Sleeves-and-Hair-like-winter-yak. Please to introduce?"

Mike raised her eyebrow even higher, but at the same time couldn't help but quirk a smile at the peculiar, yet funnily endearing man with the thick, waltzing accent she couldn't yet identify. She glanced questioningly up at Ralph, and he looked back at her briefly with a half-wincing sort of expression she couldn't quite identify. His head seemed to sink lower beneath his shoulders, and when he spoke his voice was hesitant and muttering.

"Uh . . . . right. Mike, ah . . . . this is Zangief. Zangief . . . . Michelangela," he gestured limply toward her with one hand.

Mike smiled politely, and was about to open her mouth to say hello when the hulking, bearded man suddenly startled her by bending over, picking up her hand, and pressing his mouth down on her knuckles. She froze, her skin prickling strangely and her eyebrows rising even higher.

"Ms. _Mee-_kel-angela," Zangief repeated her name incorrectly, smiling at her and gently releasing her hand. "Superb to be meeting you. But please . . . . why I have not had pleasure of seeing you around arcade before now?"

Mike opened her mouth to speak again, and was again cut off as Ralph quickly answered for her.

"She's new," he said flatly, with a strange new hint of resentment and impatience to his tone. "Her game was just plugged in on Monday."

_"Aaaah, _of course, Zangief remembers now . . . new game between Frogger and Rampage, big white box, no joystick. _Da. _So . . . . tell me, comrades, what brings you all out together this night?" Zangief looked up smilingly at Ralph and the others.

When Ralph remained awkwardly silent for a few seconds, Vanellope surprised everyone by suddenly speaking up in a firm voice.

"We're looking for a good place to find some nightlife. See, _Ralph _is taking Mike here out for her first trip around the arcade tonight."

Her words were laden with a deliberate, unmistakable sort of emphasis that Mike couldn't quite gauge the meaning of, but that - for some reason - suddenly made Ralph's face go a shade pinker, and made Zangief tilt his head back and open his mouth in a small _o _of understanding.

_"Aaaaah," _he breathed knowingly. "Yes, of course. Zangief understands."

The hairy-chested man shot Ralph a furtive, sideways wink that made his cheeks flush even brighter, and Vanellope gave a small grin of triumph.

"I don't suppose _you _have any hot spots to recommend?" she continued, turning back to Zangief, whose face lit up with another vigorous burst of laughter.

"Ha! But of _course, _little girl . . . I am this minute on my way back to hottest spot in whole arcade! My game is hosting all-night, _open house party _in celebration of freedom from lockdown! I was just out on emergency Tapper's run," Zangief nudged the huge wooden crate with his foot, which clinked as if it were full of glass bottles. "Is already shaping up to be _biggest _party of the year, all characters welcome! Friends, Wrecking Man . . . you _must _come and join me! Zangief insists!"

Mike breathed in a small gasp of excitement and lit up with a delighted smile, and whirled around immediately to seize Ralph's hand with both of hers.

"Ooh, Ralph, doesn't that sound like _fun?" _she squeaked happily. "There, _there, _I choose there! Oh please, please let's go . . . . there'll be so many characters for me to meet!"

Ralph's expression didn't match the enthusiasm of her own. He squinted one eye and crinkled half of his face hesitantly, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.

"Aaaah . . . . I, uh . . . . I don't know, Mike. Are you sure you really want to go to some big party? I mean . . . you won't really be able to get a good look around the game, it'll be noisy, and crowded, and . . . er . . . . what do _you_ guys think?"

Ralph looked uncertainly toward the others, and Mike turned to pin them as well with a wide-eyed, pleading stare. Calhoun and Felix exchanged thoughtful glances, and Vanellope raised her eyebrows and nodded slowly in contemplation.

"Eh . . . what the heck? Sounds like it might be worth a shot," she concluded satisfactorily after a moment.

Calhoun snorted. "After that nutty caucus race we just ran? A party sounds like a walk in the park . . . . even if it _is _in Street Fighter."

Ralph's face fell, and he shot one last hopeful look at Felix . . . but the small handyman only shrugged.

"Wherever the rest of you want to go is fine with me. And besides . . . we can always take Mike to our game later, Ralph. The night is still early."

"We _did _say it was her turn to choose," Vanellope added, a hint of something snarky and vindictive hidden beneath her tone.

Ralph winced regretfully at the others, then glanced at Zangief, then back down at Mike, her hands gripping tighter on his fingertips as she almost unconsciously puckered her bottom lip at him . . . . and he finally let out a low, deflating sigh of defeat.

"Al_right_," he agreed gruffly. "If you _really _want to, Mike, then . . . . let's go to the party."

Mike felt her heart leap up in her chest, and she stifled a gleeful squeal of laughter as she tugged happily on Ralph's arm and jumped a few inches in the air.

Behind her, Zangief gave another loud belly-laugh of approval and noisily heaved his crate up onto his shoulder again.

"Excellent, comrades . . . . Zangief _promises, _you will not be disappointed."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph was quiet and sullen as they passed through the gate and boarded the shuttle at the entrance to Street Fighter II, his shoulders drooping and his brow knitted in a permanent look of anxiety. The transport car creaked and swayed lightly as the six passengers of wildly variant sizes all settled onto its narrow benches, Zangief struggling for a moment with his huge crate of Tapper's bottled drinks before the shuttle beeped a short warning alarm and then zoomed off into the tunnel.

Mike was sitting on his right side, her arms entwined around his in a blissful clasp as she peered eagerly up ahead down the dark length of the passage . . . but he was too preoccupied to even enjoy the warm familiarity of her touch as they jostled along. Vanellope, who was squeezed in on his opposite side, suddenly jabbed her elbow sharply into his leg, making him flinch and glare down at her. She was pinning him with a demanding, un-amused look.

"What are you moping about _now, _crybaby?" she hissed under her breath, quietly enough that Mike and the others wouldn't hear her over the robust sound of Zangief's voice as he talked animatedly to Calhoun and Felix on the bench behind them.

Ralph narrowed his eyes at her unappreciatively. "You guys just _had _to encourage her, didn't you? All I wanted was to take her to a nice, quiet game, where we could _relax _for a little while, but _noooo . . . . _let's go to _Street Fighter, _let's go to single most crowded bash in the _whole arcade!_ Kid, have you forgotten what happened the _last _time I went to one of these big parties? It's not the kind of episode I'm dying to repeat_ . . . . especially _in front of _you know who!" _he lowered his voice to an even sharper whisper and tilted his head significantly toward Mike.

Vanellope rolled her eyes and stifled an exasperated groan.

"Oh, come _on, _Ralph . . . . are you gonna keep dwelling on that for the rest of your _life? _So you made an idiot of yourself in DDR like, a hundred years ago - who _cares? _You can't let that stop you from having a life! Besides . . . . look how excited she is!"

Vanellope gestured furtively around him toward Mike, who was practically vibrating in her seat as she kept her beaming face pointed forward over the nose of the shuttle.

"Everything's going to be _fine_, you big wuss," she whispered, waving a hand dismissively at his unconvinced frown. " . . . . just as long as you can manage not to break anything _important."_

This assessment did not leave Ralph feeling very confident as the shuttle drew towards the opening at the end of the tunnel. Zangief abruptly halted his one-sided conversation with the Fix-Its and pointed up ahead, guffawing vigorously.

"Ah-_ha! _Here we are at last . . . . Ms. Meekelangela, feast your eyes on Zangief's humble home!"

Ralph felt Mike's hands tighten on his arm as her mouth opened and her eyes bugged in amazement at the sprawling world of Street Fighter II that suddenly appeared before them as the shuttle came zooming smoothly into the open air. Ralph almost smiled at the innocence in her wide, wondering eyes, but the pessimistic anticipation of attending another party like the one in DDR was still weighing too heavily on his thoughts.

The entrance to Street Fighter II was stationed at the highest point of a steep road that banked quickly down to the ground below, somewhat like the rainbow bridge in Sugar Rush . . . . but unlike Sugar Rush, the game was not comprised of one continual landscape that spread out all the way to the horizon, with the different features simply laid out in pattern like a map. The world that their shuttle was quickly descending into down the steep incline of track was separated into more than a dozen starkly differentiated zones, all arranged in a vast ring around one blank, central space like spokes around a colossal wheel . . . . and each spoke was an entire small world contained within itself.

There were at least eight of them, huge wedges of different themes and atmospheres and color palettes . . . . cities, streets, buildings, and natural landforms from all around the world, each one corresponding to one of the Street Fighter avatars. Their edges were unmarked, but abrupt, and even the sky above them bled into different colors over each territory. At their forefront, they each connected to the empty ring in the center, inside which one could stand and survey all of the frontal platforms, presented almost like stages set for a play . . . . the stages on which the characters of the game fought their battles in view of the large player screen, which was mounted on a circular rail and could move around the circumference of the central zone to point toward each of them as necessary. It was in the middle of that central zone that the shuttle they were riding on came to a gentle halt, docking at a platform in the epicenter and beeping promptly when it was safe to dismount.

The six of them climbed out of the shuttle and stepped down onto the cool metal floor, looking up at the surrounding ring of stages with varying degrees of wonder. The game was nothing new to Ralph, as he and Vanellope had been there several times before, but he had to admit that it was nevertheless still quite a sight to behold . . . . Zangief's industrial-looking warehouse world with electric chain fencing, Chun-Li's bustling market street in a Chinese city, and of course Ken's ocean-side dock overlooking a wharf of cruise boats, beyond which the open sea stretched off into infinity . . . . all wedged in together, side by side in one dazzling, larger-than-life roulette wheel. While Zangief was hoisting up his Tapper's crate again and the others were making quietly impressed remarks amongst themselves, Ralph stole a glance down at Mike, and the astounded look on her face was enough to make him actually glad - if only for a short moment - that they'd decided to come after all.

"Watch your step, comrades!" Zangief instructed warmly as he stepped onto a secondary rectangular platform that was fenced in on three sides with protective railings, then motioned for the others to join him. Vanellope and the Fix-Its obediently herded in beside him, but Ralph had to physically tug at Mike's arm to make her follow along after him, her mouth still hanging open and her eyes still wandering in captivated amazement around the ring of stages. It wasn't until they had all boarded the platform and Zangief had punched a button on a small console, and the rectangle on which they were standing had given a mechanical _lurching _sound and begun to sink steadily into the floor that Mike jerked out of her transfixed stupor, her face turning with a perplexed frown as she saw what was happening.

"Hey . . . _wait a second!_" she cried, looking around almost anxiously as the platform descended beneath the floor of the central zone and the colorful stages vanished from sight. "I want to see more of the game! That was _unbelievable, _up there!"

"Yeah . . . where are we going, Zangief?" Ralph muttered in agreement, scanning his eyes through the pervading darkness around them as the platform kept descending lower and lower into what appeared to be an expanse of nothingness. "I thought you said you guys were throwing a _party?_"

The Russian bear-wrestler began chuckling deep in his throat, grinning with a knowing glint in his eye.

"Oh, don't worry, my friends. You can come and take look around Street Fighter stage worlds_ any_ time . . . . what you are getting tonight is much _better _treat. _Tonight's _party is bit more . . . . how you say? . . . . _underground."_

At that moment, the falling platform gave another faint, metallic _klank, _and all of a sudden they were no longer lowering through empty darkness, but had passed through the ceiling of another level of the game. Now, sprawling out beneath them in all directions practically as for as the eye could see, was one single, incredibly large room - a hot, dark, cavernous place with warehouse ceilings and dark red floors and walls that seemed to be made of riveted metal squares. The enormous room was filled with characters . . . thick, rowdy crowds of them, mingling all around between the large number of raised, white-floored boxing rings which were laid out in an even grid throughout the room, and were the only sections that were lit brightly enough to clearly make out what was happening. The instant Ralph realized what kind of a place it was they were slowly lowering into, the nervous pit in his stomach instantly doubled in size.

_Oh, no . . . . for crying out loud . . . . _

"Comrades . . . . " Zangief proclaimed proudly, gesturing widely with one arm and raising his voice to be heard above the raucous din of shouting voices echoing in the vast room, " . . . . welcome to Street Fighter _training level!"_

The lift they were standing on finally reached the floor of the basement room with a heavy _klud, _and they found themselves standing in the middle of the fray of characters crowding around the various rings, all shouting and cheering and trash-talking and pumping their fists in the air as they watched the more than two dozen fights that were taking place simultaneously on the raised boxing platforms throughout the room. The air around them was thick with the smell of sweat and body heat, and every few seconds a sharp sound like packing meat - the sound of fists and other body parts making blunt, violent contact with each other - would break through the din of voices and cut a short second of silence in its wake, only to be followed by even louder eruptions of both cheering and booing. Combatants of all shapes and sizes from every fighting game in the arcade were either sparring fiercely in the rings, or waiting for their turn on the sidelines . . . . countless characters from non-fighting games were there as well, watching the matches and rooting for their favorite fighters.

For a few seconds, Ralph just stared dismally at the wild scene in front of them, his shoulders slumping and a thick groan working its way up his throat. He glanced to his left at Vanellope and the Fix-Its, who were taking in the spectacle with corresponding silence, but starkly contrasting expressions. Vanellope had one eyebrow raised and was peering around with a somewhat disdainful look, as if she thought the whole proceeding was thoroughly stupid . . . . Felix simply looked disappointed and a bit uncomfortable.

Calhoun's face, on the other hand, was - not very surprisingly - lit up with a huge, pleasantly surprised grin of something that, for her, almost passed for genuine excitement.

"HA!" she snorted jovially, looking around the room with a laughing smirk and slapping Zangief good-naturedly on his free arm. "Well, whaddaya know? You weren't kidding, you Red Menace . . . . now this is what I call a _party!"_

"'Party!?'" Ralph echoed incredulously, holding his arms out to the noisy melee surrounding them. "This isn't a _party! _This is just one big _fight _tournament!"

Zangief looked briefly taken aback. _"Tournament? _Please, Wrecking Man, don't be crazy . . . . this is no tournament_, _this is celebration! These are just friendly matches for _fun!"_

"Yeah . . . sure _looks _like my idea of fun," Vanellope piped up in a sarcastic mutter, tilting her eyes toward the fight going on in one of the rings nearest to them and wincing sharply when two of Vanessa Lewis's teeth were knocked out by a flying kick from Dhalsim and went sailing out into the crowd, where they were caught like tiny pop-fly baseballs in the up-thrust sea of hands, eliciting a fresh burst of raucous cheering.

Felix removed his cap and began turning it in his hands, knitting his brow skeptically as he looked around.

"Er . . . . I don't know about this, gang. No offense, Mr. Zangief, but . . . is this the kind of place we ought to be exposing Michelangela to before she's had a chance to . . . . _Mike? _Hey - where did she go?"

_"What?"_ Ralph blurted out, whirling around to follow Felix's gaze to the spot at his opposite side where Mike had been standing just a moment ago . . . . and his pounding heart abruptly dropped into his stomach with a cold splash when he saw that she was gone.

"Mike!?" he cried, already beginning to grow frantic as he jerked his head up and darted his eyes in every direction around the teeming masses of faces and bodies. He pushed past the others and stumbled out of the lift, peering over the heads of the characters mingling all around them as he searched desperately for a flash of caramel-colored hair or a glimpse of white smock. He jumped and gave a slight yelp when he felt something suddenly gripping the side of his leg and crawling up his back, but a split-second later he realized that it was only Vanellope, scaling up to stand on his shoulder and scan her eyes over the crowd. Felix and Calhoun were by his side the next moment, both of them searching the throng as well.

Ralph's heart hammered anxiously at the bottom of his throat for a few achingly long seconds before Vanellope let out a cry of exclamation and pointed her arm straight ahead down the aisle between the nearest boxing rings.

"There! I see her!"

Ralph eagerly followed the direction of her finger and let out a sharp gasp of relief when he spotted Mike, standing by herself in a momentarily vacant space two rings down from them . . . judging by the dazzled, oblivious expression on her face, she was evidently so overwhelmed by the spectacle around her that she had wandered away from them without realizing it, her small frame slipping easily in between the clusters of people. Ralph breathed another steadying exhale and nodded toward the others.

"Come on, guys . . . . let's just get her and then _get out _of here," he muttered, setting off toward Mike and picking his way carefully through the crowd.

"I hate to say it, but I'm with Stinkbrain on this one," Vanellope agreed, sitting down on his shoulder as he shuffled forward and casting a distasteful look around at the hollering spectators. "This place smells like _armpit."_

"Of course . . . leave it to you pussy-willows to want to duck out of the _fun _stuff," Calhoun remarked begrudgingly from behind him. "You wanted Mike to get a feel for the arcade, didn't you? Well, look around! This party is a perfect crash course! Just look at how many - "

"Uh . . . Ralph?" Vanellope interrupted, her small body suddenly going stiff for a moment as she tugged firmly on his ear to get his attention. "What is Mike doing up there?"

"Huh?" Ralph, who had been watching his feet to keep from stepping on anyone, looked back up to where Vanellope was pointing . . . and froze. He stopped dead in his tracks, making Calhoun and Felix abruptly bump into him from behind.

"Ouch! _Ralph . . . _what _is it?" _Felix muttered, stepping back and rubbing his nose.

Ralph didn't answer him. He was staring up ahead over the crowd, his jaw hanging open in a horrified gape. For a few seconds, he couldn't make himself move or speak . . . it was only when Vanellope began urgently nudging the side of his head with her hands and snapping at him to wake up that he jolted back to reality, his eyes bugging with panic as he forgot all pretense of manners and began pushing his way through the crowd.

_"MIKE!" _he shouted frantically, fighting to raise his voice enough reach her over the constant, roaring din of the room . . . but it was no use. She didn't so much as glance back at him, and Ralph could only struggle to push his way forward and watch, aghast, as Chun-Li, who had just finished a fight and was clearing out so that the next one could begin, helped pull Mike up into one of the boxing rings. Once she was there, she straightened up and looked around from her new vantage point, grinning an excited, oblivious grin as her opponent - none other than Nina Williams herself - stood up in the opposite corner and began to stretch her heavily-muscled arms.

The onlookers around them erupted into a goading cheer of anticipation.

A/N; So guys, just a little heads up . . . I'm afraid this is going to be my last update for a little while, at least a week and a half. I'm going away for Spring Break and will have no access to a computer. Enjoy your own time off, everybody, and I'll see you all again in the middle of March!


	29. Chapter 28: Let's Get Ready to WRECK-IT

**A/N: **What, whut? I'm back, guys!

Oh, my, glob. My mission trip to Juarez, Mexico, was beyond amazing. God has blessed me in too many ways to count. And thank you all for your warm wishes, I hope that you all had wonderful and relaxing spring breaks, and that those of you still in school are ready to finish off the semester with a bang!

So, yeah . . . this chapter was almost _stupidly _hard to write. Getting back into the swing of this story took more out of me than I expected. Also, I've basically just given up on trying to be economical and get as much material into each installment as I would really like, because it never happens . . . this thing is just going to have to go and go until it finally reaches the end. If that means it's going to be something absurd, like . . . a hundred chapters long? So be it. I wish you luck, my patient and fabulous readers.

Also, to try and make up a bit for the wait, there's going to be some art for this chapter ( and the next one? ) posted on my dA soon. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 28: Let's Get Ready to WRECK-IT_

_"MIKE!" _

Ralph's voice came out in a frantic sputter as he shoved his way through the last cluster of bystanders and finally reached the edge of the boxing ring in which Michelangela standing. He threw himself against the side of it ( the five-foot-lofted floor barely came up to his chest ) and stuck his head between the parallel ropes, barely noticing when this action knocked Vanellope unceremoniously off of his shoulder with a sharp yelp. Fortunately, Calhoun had been following closely enough at his heels to catch the falling president before she hit the floor . . . but Ralph wasn't paying them any attention. He forced one hand between the semi-elastic ropes - making them warp sharply to accommodate his bulky forearm - and gave the hem of Mike's smock a sharp, downward _tug . . . _only then did she finally turn to look at him.

"Oh, Ralph!" she exclaimed happily with surprise, clearly having been too enthralled with her surroundings to hear him bellowing her name as he had plowed his way toward her through the crowd. She was grinning from ear to ear, and she crouched down on her haunches to put her face level with his. "Ralph, isn't this a great party? There's so much energy, so much . . . _information, _in this room, it's like I can feel it buzzing through my - "

"Mike, this isn't just a _party!" _Ralph interrupted her bluntly, knitting his brow and closing the hand that was still thrust between the ropes gently but firmly around her forearm. "This is a _fight club . . . . _and you're standing IN THE RING!"

Her smile drooped, and she gave him a nonplussed blink.

"Yeah . . . so?"

_"So? _So if you don't get out of it _quick, _the next fighter is going to think _you're _their opponent!"

She blinked again, and her smile returned.

"But I _am_ the next opponent!" she said brightly, pointing over her shoulder to the opposite corner of the ring, where Nina Williams - in all her skin-tight, curvaceous glory - had her back to them, and was loosely shaking out her muscular neck and shoulders. "I met this _lovely_ character who said her name was Chun-Li, and she told me I could have the next turn in the ring if I wanted! I'm going to play against that nice blonde woman over there. Isn't she beautiful? I wonder if she'd let me draw her sometime . . . "

"MIKE!" Ralph snapped firmly, making her jump and look up from her wandering train of thought. "You don't under_stand . . . . _this isn't a game, it's a _fight! _You know, a _fist fight? _With the punching, and the kicking, and the broken noses and fat lips? And that _'nice blonde woman' _you're talking about is one of the most brutal fighters in the _entire arcade!"_

Mike simply stared back at him and tilted her head a fraction to one side, clearly still not grasping what the problem was.

"Uh . . . . yeah? So?"

Ralph ground his teeth together and wrung his free hand in frustration, fighting the urge to smack himself on the forehead.

"SO . . . . don't you _get it? _Nina Williams is going to _mop the floor with you! _She could break every bone in your body without breaking a _sweat! _One punch from her, and you'll be lucky if you wake up again!"

Mike blinked again for a moment, then rolled her eyes and blew a short, dismissive puff of air through her lips.

_"Pppfffftthhbt . . . . _oh, Ralph, _come on. _Don't be silly! I mean, _you _punched me in the nose, and I was perfectly fine! And you've got to be a hundred times stronger than she is!"

Ralph's eyes popped wide for a moment, then narrowed indignantly with embarrassment, an immediate blush rising in his cheeks.

"I didn't _punch you _in the nose, Mike, that . . . th-that was an _accident . . . _and besides, that doesn't mean that Nina won't - "

"But these aren't _real _fights, they're just for fun!" she continued confidently, ignoring his flushed stammer of protest. "Your friend Zangief said so!"

"Mike . . . _Zangief's_ idea of fun is wrestling bears with one foot tied to his elbow! Now PLEASE, for the love of _Nintendo, _would you just get down from that ring before you - "

"What? What's going on, what did we miss?"

Ralph cut off in mid-sentence and craned his neck around to look in the direction of Vanellope's shrill voice. She, Felix and Calhoun had worked their way through the spectators up to the edge of the ring beside him . . . and in order for Vanellope and Felix to be able to see over the platform, they were employing the same piggy-back technique that they'd used at the DDR party, with Felix perched on his wife's shoulders and Vanellope in turn sitting wobblingly on his, holding her arms out every few seconds to steady herself. Mike lit up when she saw them.

"Guess what, guys? I get to fight somebody named Nina Williams!"

The three stacked faces of the small human tower each blanked simultaneously. Their eyes widened as if on cue with each other and darted over to look in the opposing corner of the ring, where the legendary Tekken fighter was indeed cracking her knuckles and making a few short practice hops from side to side.

Vanellope, Felix, and Calhoun then turned as one and nodded at Ralph with a matching set of urgent, no-nonsense stares.

_"Get her out of there_, Wreck-It," Calhoun ordered bluntly.

Only too happy to obey, Ralph quickly thrust his other arm through the ropes and grabbed Michelangela firmly around the waist, lifting her bare feet off of the canvas floor of the ring.

"Wha . . . ? Hey, now wait just a _minute!" _Mike snapped, kicking her feet and uselessly trying to pry Ralph's hand off of her midriff.

"Sorry, Mike, but it's for your own good," Ralph muttered, grunting lowly with effort as he struggled to keep her secured in his grasp and disentangle himself from the ropes of the ring at the same time. After a few seconds of clumsy fumbling, he gave a frustrated gasp and lost his grip on her, and the instant her feet hit the floor again Mike backed away out of his reach, her eyes narrowing and her mouth flattening in a determined line.

"Just _hold on, _you guys!" she said bluntly, raising her palms to stop them from trying to bodily remove her again. "I might be the _new kid _around here, but I think I know enough by now to start making my own decisions!"

Ralph and the others exchanged brief, blank glances.

"Not about _this _you don't, Chickadee," Vanellope remarked bluntly. "You have no idea what you're getting yourself into here."

"And what's more, if you get yourself pummeled to death in _this _game, you're not going to regenerate, remember?" Calhoun added, wincing slightly as she readjusted under the weight of the two small people on her shoulders.

Mike stuck out her bottom lip obstinately, then gestured with one arm to the crowded room behind her.

"Not _all _of these people are part of this game, are they?" she pointed out, with only half the tone of a question. "I don't see any of _them _worrying about that."

As if to serendipitously demonstrate her point, at that exact moment in one of the other rings nearby, the sound of Mortal Kombat's Johnny Cage shouting triumphantly as he delivered a bone-crushing elbow dig to the sternum of Virtua Fighter's Lion Rafale made the nearby spectators give an audible, collective shudder.

Ralph opened his mouth quickly to reply, but to his own surprise, found himself suddenly without an argument. Calhoun frowned thoughtfully and lifted her eyes up toward Felix.

"Hm. Well . . . she has a point."

"But . . . but it's not the _same, _because those characters are still _fighters!" _Ralph objected, finding his voice again after a few seconds. "Mike's never fought anyone in her life . . . Nina would clobber her!"

"Well . . . maybe so, but . . . . you know, I _do _have my hammer with me and all, Ralph," Felix suddenly spoke up for the first time in a timid mutter, everyone darting to look at him and Ralph's face falling, even as Mike's lit up with a glimmer of hope. "I can fix her right up if she _does _get a bit . . . er, you know . . . and, we can always stop the fight before things go too far . . . ?"

Ralph gaped at the others in disbelief, growling and squeezing his eyes shut briefly as he forcibly wrenched himself free from the ring ropes, then pinned each of them in turn with an incredulous glare.

"I can't believe what I'm hearing!" he cried, running both hands exasperatedly over his head. "Have you people all _lost it!? _There is no way I am going to let Mike get beaten to a pulp by _Nina the assassin Williams_ just because . . . _. _because she thinks it will be _fun!"_

His words were followed by a moment of awkward silence so abrupt, Ralph's unyielding scowl actually softened faintly with surprise, and he noticed that Felix, Calhoun and Vanellope had all shifted their gazes quietly past him. His scowl dropping completely and a sudden, inexplicable chill coming over him, Ralph slowly turned to look back up at Mike . . . and the chill clenched shut inside his chest like the fingers of an invisible, icy hand. Her hands were balled into fists and held rigidly at her sides, her shoulders tensing and her face bristling with an expression that Ralph immediately realized he had never actually seen her exhibit before . . . the shock of it was almost enough to make him feel as if he ought to begin apologizing on the spot.

For possibly the first time in her life, Michelangela was _angry._

"I, ah . . . . I'm not sure that it's really _up _to you, Ralph," Felix muttered uneasily, his eyes shifting sideways toward his taken aback antagonist.

Ralph was speechless for another few seconds, paralyzed under Mike's burning stare with a feeling halfway between guilt and an almost frightened confusion bubbling up inside of him . . . unable to bring himself to say anything to her, he tore his gaze away and turned to point one desperate, last-ditch glance at Vanellope.

_"You _know I'm right, don't you, kid?" he pleaded. "You said so yourself, she doesn't know what she's getting into! Come on, Vanellope, what do _you_ think? . . . . She might _listen _to you," he added quietly, in a concealed whisper.

Vanellope narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, then crossed her arms and rubbed one hand on her chin in mock-consideration.

"Hmmm . . . " she hummed through closed lips for a moment, deliberately avoiding Ralph's pleading stare . . . . then, her mouth spread wide in a cool, conniving grin, and she abruptly stood up on Felix's shoulders.

"I think we better get that hair out of your eyes first, Chickadee."

Mike's angry glare immediately brightened into a delighted gasp, and Ralph's jaw dropped as he watched Vanellope leap off of Felix's shoulders, bounce once on the top rope of the boxing ring, then hop onto the post in Mike's corner.

Ralph stuttered wordlessly for a moment, then whirled around and held out his hands beseechingly toward the Fix-Its.

"Calhoun, Felix . . . you guys _can't _be serious!"

Calhoun somehow managed to shrug while still holding her husband securely on her shoulders.

"She's made her choice, Wreck-It. Even if she doesn't act like it, Mike _is_ a grown woman - she can do what she wants."

Ralph stammered helplessly again, a thousand screaming thoughts of protest all struggling to fight their way out his mouth at once.

"But . . . b-but . . . . I can't just stand here and _watch _her get . . . get . . . !"

Calhoun's matter-of-fact stare softened slightly, and she exchanged a quick, sympathetic look with Felix before letting go of one his shins and laying a steadying hand on Ralph's tense forearm.

_"Calm down, _Ralph. Of course we're not going to let her really get hurt . . . she may get a _bruise _or two, but Felix can patch her up. Listen, big guy . . . I know your heart's in the right place, but . . . you're just gonna have to face facts. Like it or not, you can't call all of Mike's shots for her just because you want to keep her safe."

The argument working its way up to his mouth halted before it could escape, changing suddenly into a thick lump that stuck like a knot at the back of his throat. Ralph's shoulders slumped, his hands slowly lowering back to his sides as he stared at Calhoun without really seeing her, her lips parting and his brow gradually knitting with a pang of realization.

All of a sudden, an old, familiar strain of anxious thought that had been buried somewhere deep in his subconscious painfully resurfaced.

_It was sheer chance that you just happened to be the first person to go into her game, the first person she ever __**met. **__She'd was just excited to have __**anyone**__ at all to talk to . . . . even you._

_You can't keep calling all the shots for her . . . . sooner or later, she's going to know enough to start making her own choices._

_What's going to happen now that she isn't afraid to leave her game . . . . now that she has __**other **__people to talk to, to spend time with? What's going to happen when she realizes she has a choice, between them . . . . and __**you**__?_

_Do you really think she'll choose you?_

For what felt like a long time, but might really have only been a minute or two, Ralph stood there frozen, with the horrible, wrenching thoughts driving themselves harder and harder into his mind and almost making him begin to feel lightheaded . . . . until Vanellope's sharp voice suddenly sounded loudly enough to make him blink and look back up into the ring.

_"There!"_ the beaming president declared proudly, straightening up and wobbling for a moment on the narrow tip of the ring post. She gestured toward Mike with both hands and shot a sly look down at the others. "Well? Whaddaya think, kids? She look ready to _rumble, _or what?"

Mike was grinning like a Jack-O-Lantern, her arms folded up and tightly hugging her sides as she turned a half-circle for them to see. Evidently having already forgotten her moment of anger towards him, she shot Ralph a glowing smile and scrunched her nose with excitement.

"How do I look, Ralph?" she asked gleefully.

Ralph didn't answer. He wasn't able to make his voice work as he stared at her through the parallel ropes, his jaw slowly dropping and his conflicting trains of thought and emotion colliding into such a tangled jumble that he didn't know if the hollow twisting deep in his insides was a product of his own anxiety . . . or the transfixing sight smiling down at him.

Vanellope had managed to gather up the wild, tremendous mass of Michelangela's curly hair and pull it back and up toward the crown of her head, tying it into a thick knot that was practically as large as her head itself. A few spiraling tendrils were hanging loose and trailing down the back of her bare, pale neck . . . and it was in following those tendrils with his eyes that Ralph suddenly realized _why _her neck was bare. Mike had taken off her baggy, concealing smock and tied it in a wadded-up loop around her narrow hips, leaving her standing there from the naval up in nothing but the bright red bandeau which he'd once caught a fleeting glimpse of when she was reaching in for her paintbrush, and for the first time he found himself gaping, wide-eyed, at the pale, bare skin of her thin shoulders, graceful collarbone, and flat little tummy.

Before Ralph could so much as find the wherewithal to even close his mouth, let alone answer her question, his attention was abruptly drawn toward the center of the ring where someone had suddenly stomped their foot down on the canvas floor in a loud, pounding tremor. They all looked up to see Nina Williams standing in the middle of the ring with her hands planted on her hips and one high-heeled boot pressing forward beneath a taut, muscular thigh clad in purple spandex.

"Come _on, _people!" the Tekken aikido warrior growled impatiently, but not without the hint of an anticipatory grin. "Let's get this match started already! Is there an opponent for me or _not?"_

Ralph felt as if the bottom of his stomach had dropped out, but he knew there was nothing he could do now except watch helplessly as Michelangela leapt eagerly out of her corner of the ring and stepped straight up to address the towering, muscular woman face to face. She thrust one arm out happily for a handshake, and Nina started and leaned backwards from it, her eyes darting between Mike's grinning face and her waiting hand as if unable to determine which was more peculiar.

"Can I . . . _help you?" _Nina muttered distastefully.

Oblivious to her reticence, Mike simply reached out and grabbed Nina's hand rather than waiting for her to accept the gesture, shaking it warmly and tilting her head back to look the bemused blonde fighter in the eye.

"Hi! My name is Mike! I'm from Masterwork, I'm new in the arcade, and I'm _really _excited about getting to fight with you!"

Ralph groaned out loud and buried his face in his hand.

Nina blinked, raising one eyebrow and quirking her mouth in a patronizing smile. She tactfully extricated her hand from Mike's grasp.

"Uh-_huh," _she mumbled, glancing briefly at a few of her spectators as they began chuckling at the sidelines. "Never, ah . . . never heard of _Masterwork _before. What kind of fighting game _is _it?"

Nina's tone was joking and dry, but Mike apparently didn't pick up on it.

"Actually, it's a _puzzle _game," she explained brightly, her clueless smile never faltering.

Nina's smirk grew more blatant, and her constituent of fans openly broke out laughing. Ralph shot an impotent glare in their direction.

"A puzzle game. Rrrright. Ah, ha ha . . . listen, ah, _Mike, _was it?_ . . . _I don't think you understand. This is a _fist _fight, not a round of _Tetris."_

The condescending, but still somewhat well-meaning tone of her voice made Ralph look up sharply, his heart palpitating with a weak glimmer of hope. _Maybe Nina would refuse to fight her after all . . . _

"Oh, I know!" Mike assured pleasantly, pointing one finger over her shoulder toward another ring. "I was watching some of the others. It looks like so much fun, I can't _wait_ to try it!"

A fraction of the patience drained from Nina's face, and she narrowed her eyes with an irritated sigh.

"Look, sister. I gather that you're new around here and all, but I have to warn you . . . when I start a fight, I _finish it. _Are you _really _sure you want to go through with this?" she muttered, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows, stressing transparently that it was Mike's last chance to back out.

Ralph tensed his shoulders and squeezed his eyes shut, his lips unconsciously mouthing his pleading thoughts . . .

_Please back out, please back out, please back out . . ._

_Oh, Mike . . . . __**please, **__back out . . ._

"Of course I do!"

Mike's animated reply severed the last tenuous strings of his hope like a knife, and his eyes opened into a miserable stare as the rest of him deflated. In the corner of his eye, he saw Felix trying to give him a reassuring smile.

"Don't worry, Ralph . . . she's going to be _fine," _he lifted his hammer halfway from it holster and flashed it briefly to illustrate his assertion. "I'll make sure of it."

Ralph heaved a groaning sigh and turned back to the ring, where Mike and Nina were already retreating into their respective corners with opposite levels of enthusiasm. He didn't bother trying to explain himself any further to Felix or the others as he watched the two women squaring off, his stomach twisting into helpless knots as he waited for the wretched sound of the starting bell.

_None of them understood . . . . it wasn't the thought of Mike actually __**dying **__in the ring that was worrying him, that was filling him with so much dread and revulsion . . . . heck, that wasn't even a possibility. He'd tear the place down and punch out Nina Williams himself __before he would let anything __**close **__to that happen._

_No . . . it was the thought of standing there and __**watching**__ her get hit that was making him feel sick inside._

_It was the idea of having to watch her discover, for the first time in her life, what true, unrelenting __**pain **__was really like. _

BBRRRIING!

The starting bell rang sharply from some unseen place nearby, and the crowd surrounding the ring broke out in a dull cheer as Mike and Nina turned to face each other and advanced out into the ring. Mike, still wearing a huge, ignorant smile on her face, was amateurishly trying to imitate a boxing stance she must have noticed from one of the other fighters . . . her fists were clenched and her arms bent at the ready, but her posture was awkwardly erect, her knees bent beneath her rigid torso as she jumped out onto the floor. Nina simply smirked at her and strode calmly forward, not even bothering to crouch into position.

Vanellope, who was still sitting perched atop the post in Mike's corner of the ring, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted shrilly above the din of the crowd.

"Come on, Chickadee! Show that bleach-blonde _she-hulk _what you're made of!"

In spite of himself, Ralph tore his eyes away from the ring long enough to shoot Vanellope a scathing, unappreciative look . . . but an instant later, his attention was wrenched straight back by the sound of a sudden, collective gasp from the characters around him, and he whirled just in time to see Mike - still grinning - throw the first punch of the fight . . . if the stiff, gawky jab that she aimed at Nina's chest area with her scrawny arm could even respectfully be called a punch. Ralph's heart skipped a beat as Nina caught Mike's fist in her palm and flicked it away as easily as if she were swatting a paper airplane. The crowd snickered.

Undeterred, Mike drew her arms back to her core and jumped aside, bouncing clumsily on the balls of her feet for a few seconds and then thrusting forward again with her other arm. This time . . . still without so much as flinching her relaxed posture . . . Nina deflected the attack with the back of her left hand, planted her right in a blunt clamp straight over Mike's face, and with one light flex of her muscled forearm, pushed her down flat on the floor of the ring.

The crowd roared with laughter, and Ralph felt a blazing heat of anger flare up in his belly and briefly overshadow his anxiety. His shoulders tensed, his teeth clenched in the beginning of a snarl, and he was about to reach up and pull down on the ropes when the touch of Calhoun's hand, resting lightly but firmly on his arm, stopped him.

"Easy, Wreck-It," she muttered, her eyes never leaving the center of the ring. "Give her a chance to fight for her_self_."

Ralph grimaced, but forced himself to breathe out his frustration in a heavy exhale and turned reluctantly back to the fight.

Deaf to the sound of the spectators' mocking laughter, Mike was on her feet again in the blink of an eye. She shook herself quickly, then dropped straight back into her ungainly posture, raising her fists a bit higher as if to shield her face. She bobbed in a half-circle around Nina - whose feet hadn't yet moved - and let loose on her with a fevered, clumsy barrage of punches, each of which Nina effortlessly repelled with careless flicks of her wrist. Slightly out of breath, Mike withdrew her arms and held back a split second in an attempted feint . . . then, with a small, excited grunt of effort, lunged at Nina's torso with her full weight as if to try and tackle her bodily.

Nina took a single step backward, grabbed both of Mike's thin wrists in one hand . . . and in one calm, fluid motion, flipped her entire body feet over head and slammed her down on the canvas floor with a shuddering _WHAM. _

Mike's eyes popped wide and her mouth opened in a breathless gasp as her back hit the ground with bruising, trembling force and then bounced back up, arching in a painful recoil. Ralph felt himself go cold. He cried out in reflexive panic, but his voice was lost amidst the roar of the crowd.

_"Mike!"_

For a few agonizing seconds, she lay flat on her back and didn't move, her face frozen in shock. Nina looked down at her and scoffed, rolling her eyes and planting her hands on her hips.

"This is pathetic," she declared bluntly, nudging Mike's ribcage with her toe as the scrawny girl gave a slight writhe of pain and rolled to her side. "Somebody get her out of here and find me a _real _opponent!"

Her words, serious or not, were all the permission Ralph needed. Seizing immediately on the opportunity to end the fight then and there, he pushed his way past Calhoun and Felix and gripped the post where Vanellope was sitting, heaving himself up onto the ledge of the ring and ignoring its protesting creak. He was just about to jump over the ropes to retrieve Mike when Vanellope suddenly leapt from her perch onto his shoulder and stopped him with a sharp tug on the collar of his shirt.

"Wait a minute, Ralph!" she cried sharply. "Look!"

_"What!?" _Ralph snapped, frantic and impatient. He darted his gaze to where Vanellope was pointing, just as Nina was turning and walking away from Mike's crippled, curled up body . . . but before the Tekken fighter had taken two steps, a thin, feeble hand shot out and gripped her by the ankle, abruptly tripping her and sending her sprawling flat on her face with a tiny, startled yelp. The heckling bystanders immediately went silent, staring with open-mouthed surprise.

Ralph, Vanellope, and the others all watched speechlessly as Mike - her shoulders shaking almost imperceptibly, and tendrils of sweat-dampened hair falling into her face - slowly lifted herself off the floor, propping herself up on one arm and then rising weakly to all fours, keeping her grip and bracing herself on Nina's ankle as she moved.

Her momentary shock wearing off and immediately replaced by incredulous anger, Nina whirled around to look at Mike with a searing glare of embarrassment and indignation, breathing heavily and rocketing to her feet.

"_Cheap move_, Masterwork!" she snapped, her cheeks reddening just faintly and her fists clenching with an almost inaudible leather _creak._

Straightening up weakly onto her knees, Mike lolled her head back to look up with a disoriented squint, which somehow appeared to only provoke Nina's irritation further. She grit her teeth, reached down, and clamped her hand again over Mike's face . . . but just as she was moving to push her back to the floor, Mike suddenly grabbed Nina's wrist with both hands and clumsily pulled down with the whole weight of her small body, catching her by surprise and laying both of them flat out in the middle of the ring again.

This time, the audience broke out in a pleasantly startled cheer. All Ralph could do was hang motionlessly from the post and stare with his mouth open, not even noticing as Vanellope scrambled her way to the top of his head for a better view.

Nina was caught off guard for only the blink of an eye before she was reeling back to her feet and crouching for the first time into a serious fighting stance, her glare of mild indignation now changed into a furious snarl. Without speaking, she seized Mike by the knot of her hair and wrenched her onto her feet, not even flinching at her sharp inhale of pain. Nina pulled back with one arm, and then, with the first true display of her renowned strength and brutality, let loose and punched Mike square in the face.

_THWOCK!_

The blunt, packing sound of Nina's knuckles as they dug into fragile skin and bone seemed to resonate through Ralph's insides like a brief wave of nausea, but he was paralyzed with horror and could only watch as Mike went reeling back from the impact and fell against the ropes on the opposite side of the ring, slumping down in a limp heap with her face hidden from view. The crowd flinched and gave a communal _oooooohh _of corporeal empathy.

Nina lunged again without even waiting for Mike to look up. Something in the Tekken fighter's demeanor had changed . . . something almost intangible, but undeniably deadly. It was obvious that even though Mike was still no threat to her, the kid gloves were off . . . there would be no more pulled punches. Nina crossed the ring in three powerful strides and delivered a whirling, sideways kick that landed on Mike's side with enough force to dislocate ribs from their cartilage . . . she went sprawling to the floor again, but hadn't lain there half a second before Nina bodily picked her up and threw her like a rag-doll back to the other side of the ring. The crowd roared with a clashing din of both cheering and booing as Mike hit the floor, bounced twice, and rolled until she came to a stop against Ralph's post.

For another instant, Ralph simply stared down in disbelieving horror at the bruised, crumpled figure in front of him . . . . then, with a ragged, emotional noise that was halfway between a growl and a savage cry emanating from somewhere deep in his throat, he reached down over the post toward Mike . . . but his hand froze unexpectedly and hovered frantically over her body for a few seconds, not knowing what to do. He wanted desperately to scoop her up and pull her out of the ring, but was suddenly fearful of worsening her injuries by doing so.

_"Hey!" _Nina's vicious growl sounded from across the ring. She jabbed one accusing finger in their direction. "Hands off! She's _mine!"_

"Ralph, _do something!" _Vanellope's voice cried anxiously out next to his ear. His hand almost shaking with panic, Ralph carefully put two fingers on Mike's bare shoulder and tried to turn her upper body as gently as possible to face him, just as Nina's footsteps began to stomp menacingly toward them.

"Mike?" he uttered, almost fearfully, his voice going hollow with a sudden dread . . . and then, without warning, her eyes shot open and looked straight up at him, startling him so much he pulled back his hand with a cry of alarm and nearly toppled backwards off the side of the ring.

Mike held his gaze for a split second with an unseeing, madly calculating stare as her brain raced visibly behind the flashing discs of green . . . then, she grimaced in a sharp wince of pain and rolled quickly to her hands and feet, throwing herself out of the way just as Nina's fist came slamming down on the spot where she'd been lying, hitting the floor so hard that the entire corner of the ring trembled beneath Vanellope and Ralph as they reeled in confusion and alarm.

All of a sudden, Ralph heard Calhoun's harsh, thundering voice rising up above the roar of the other spectators.

"_That's it_, rookie!" she shouted triumphantly, pumping one fist in the air so hard that Felix yelped and nearly fell from her shoulders. "Duck and weave, duck and weave! Give her something to _chase!"_

Mike scrambled back to the center of the ring, but Nina was on her again in the blink of an eye, charging toward her with a full-frontal assault, growling and swinging her powerful fists in a rapid two-punch. Mike managed to dodge the first one, but the second made cracking contact with her jaw and spun her around in a perfect about-face . . . she stumbled and dropped down to one knee, but shot out one hand and kept herself from falling. Nina came at her again with another seismic down-punch, but Mike flung herself onto all fours and lunged out of the way just in time. She rolled shakily to her feet, and Nina followed with a lateral punch straight to her gut . . . it hit, but this time the contact was less successful, Mike jumping away backward in time to keep the blow from digging too deeply into her abdomen. She coughed and doubled over slightly, but staggered backward and kept her balance. She raised her shaking fists in front of her again, and the crowd around the ring - which had been growing steadily larger over the past few minutes as more and more passing characters took notice of the peculiar, one-sided fight - erupted into a deafening cheer.

Ralph didn't hear the delighted roar of the crowd as Nina bore down on Mike and pushed her backward around the ring with a continual barrage of punches and kicks, didn't see the flurry of jubilant fists around him all pumping and cheering for the underdog opponent . . . all he could hear was the violent packing sound of each blow, all he could see was the trace of red smeared at the corner of Mike's mouth, the dark bruises blooming on her arms and belly and face, the sheen of sweat that made the ends of her hair cling almost fearfully to her neck and forehead. Ralph cringed as another biting punch dug into her right cheek and threw her head sharply to one side, and all at once he couldn't take any more. Setting his jaw to keep himself from crying out, he swung one leg over the ropes, determined to stop the fight even if it meant bodily throwing himself into the middle of it . . . but before he could, something fisted tightly in the leg of his overalls and yanked him back down. He jerked his head to see Calhoun - still shouldering a fraught-looking Felix - pinning him with a forbidding look and slowly shaking her head.

"She _wanted _to do this, Ralph. You've got to let her fight her own battles!"

"But . . . but she _isn't _fighting!" he stammered frantically. "She's just getting _beaten!"_

Calhoun narrowed her eyes and pointed her finger sharply at the ring.

"Calm down and look _closer. _She's not just getting hit . . . . she's _learning."_

Ralph looked reluctantly back toward the ring, every ounce of reason and feeling still screaming at him to jump in and put a stop the whole mess . . . when suddenly, like a dim light flickering on deep within his reeling consciousness, he realized that Calhoun was right, that something in the dynamic of the fight was changing almost imperceptibly in front of his eyes.

Nina was still hammering Mike with a continual onslaught of punches, and all of them found at least glancing purchase on her battered frame . . . but now, somehow, not one of them seemed able to knock her off of her feet again. Mike was dodging breathlessly left and right beneath the pummeling blows, and Nina's knuckles caught her repeatedly on the lip, the chin, the shoulder, the arm . . . . but the more punches that were thrown, the less damage they each seemed to inflict, until finally the strikes were only just grazing her as she ducked and jumped from side to side to like a jackrabbit prancing to and fro in a hail of bullets . . . and a moment after that, almost shockingly abruptly, none of the punches were hitting her at all.

Now, even Nina's forehead was beginning to glisten faintly with perspiration, but their constant stream of back and forth movements was now closer to some strange sort of dance than a fistfight. Nina's vicious glare had been replaced with a slowly deepening look of confusion and waning energy as her fists struck out again and again, but repeatedly found only air. With continually improving precision, Mike slid and spun and whirled out of the path of her jabbing arms until finally, after almost a full five minutes had elapsed without the sound of a single bodily contact, Nina let out a deep breath of exhaustion and stopped attacking. She came to a halt in the middle of the ring, leaning forward and panting heavily as she stared up at Mike with a look of utter disbelief.

As soon as she realized that the fists had stopped flying, Mike followed suit and slowed to a wobbling stop, hunching forward and bracing herself on her knees as she sucked in breath after ragged breath. A baited hush of uncertainty fell over the immediate crowd. Ralph propped himself higher on the post with one hand and leaned forward over it until it nearly bowed under his weight, narrowing his eyes at Mike's heaving shoulders and struggling to get a good look at her face, almost dreading what he might see if he did . . . . but the next second, she had straightened up and turned her back to him, her arms hanging wearily and her feet dragging as she took a few steps forward toward her still stunned opponent.

Beneath the slowly growing murmur of the nearby spectators, Ralph heard Mike's small voice struggling out between her panting breaths . . . . weak, and exhausted, but even now still bright with a flicker of childish, unyielding enthusiasm.

"This . . . ha . . . _whoo . . . _this is really . . . _something . . . . _isn't it . . . . Ms. Williams?"

Nina looked disbelievingly up at her . . . . stared at her for one wordless, suspended moment with an unreadable expression of either total incredulity, or abject rage . . . . and without a hint of warning, balled up her fist, shot one arm forward, and pounded Mike square in the jaw with a shuddering, bone-crushing uppercut.

The crowd gasped. For a split second, time slowed down and everything became silent. Ralph's jaw dropped, and he tried to move, but discovered that his limbs were suddenly heavy as stone and may as well have been latched to the post beneath him. He heard Vanellope suck in a disbelieving gasp beside his ear, but couldn't even turn his eyes to glance at her. His gaze was glued helplessly to the center of the ring as Mike's head flew so far back that her face tilted upside-down to meet his, her eyes wide and expressionless. Clear, glistening flecks of saliva flew from her mouth and arced into the air as her entire body reeled into a backbend, then fell down and landed with a bouncing thud on the floor of the ring.

Mike lay stunned and blinking on the floor for a single second, her body stiff and rigid from the shock of the impact . . . then, everything still crawling by in slow motion, Ralph watched speechlessly as she almost mechanically jerked her right hand back into motion, reached it underneath her into the wadded folds of her smock, still clinging limply around her waist, and - as if from nowhere, like magic - procured the long, thick wand of her Battle Strokes brush. She propped herself dazedly up on one arm, raised the brush over her head . . . and swung.

Like the snap of some cosmic, divine pair of fingers, the resonating crack of the brushstroke rocketed time back up to speed, and Ralph realized that the whole exchange had transpired in one blinking instant . . . his heart was pounding like a jackhammer, and all at once a streak of blinding orange paint had shot out like a whip from the end of Mike's brush and hit Nina Williams like a bolt of lightning square in the center of her chest. There was a fierce blasting sound almost like the report of a gunshot, and Nina went sailing off her feet, flying straight up through the air and over the side of the ring, where a cluster of shocked characters half-caught her, and half-toppled to the ground in trying to catch her.

The streak of paint went limp and fell down to the floor of the ring, splattering a swatch of orange all the way to the ropes. Mike stared blearily off in the direction Nina had flown for another few seconds . . . then, her eyes rolled back in their sockets, and her arm gave way beneath her as she flopped down on her back in a motionless collapse.

For a short, stunned moment, everything was silent again.

Then, the spectators began to mutter curiously amongst themselves, the chatter quickly escalating into a loud babble of debate over who had won.

"Disqualified!" someone declared loudly, to the protesting argument of several others. "You can't use a weapon in hand-to-hand!"

"So what? Being thrown out of the ring counts as an immediate K.O.!" someone else retorted.

The arguments grew sharper and more heated, but Ralph wasn't listening to them.

The instant he had been able to will movement back into his petrified limbs, he had clumsily thrown himself over the post and landed with a sprawling _thud _on the floor of the ring, scrambling frantically to his feet only to skid down to his knees again at Mike's side, this time sliding his hands beneath her fragile body and gently sweeping her up without a second's hesitation. Vanellope gave a series of jolted yelps and managed to hold onto his head until he was hunched and kneeling over Mike's blank face . . . then, either finally unable or unwilling to try and hide the pang of genuine concern furrowing her brow and her squeaking voice, she crawled down to his shoulder and leaned over to look worriedly at the bruised, battered figure cradled in his hands.

"Is . . . . is she . . . . okay?"

Ralph didn't answer. His mouth was open, but his voice was rooted immovably in the back of his throat. He was trying desperately to keep himself from shaking. Slowly, he curled his right hand just enough to brush Mike's bangs out of her face with the tip of his thumb . . . and immediately after, he almost wished he hadn't. The stone pit of dread in his stomach turned instantly to a pit of ice as he got his first real look at the damage she'd sustained. Her mouth was bleeding from both corners, her right eye was blackened and swelling rapidly, and the rest of her was covered with too many welts and nicks and bruises for him to count. Ralph heard someone breathing heavily, and realized that it was him.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Calhoun and Felix climbing up over the ropes and running to meet them in the center of the ring, Felix already unsheathing his hammer as he dropped to his knees on Mike's opposite side. His pale, visibly shaken protagonist didn't waste a single second.

"H-hold her up, Ralph," he ordered immediately, noticeably struggling to keep his voice steady.

Still unable to make himself talk at all, Ralph obediently uncurled his fingers and lowered Mike's wilted body back down to the level of the floor, his hollow, panicked breath growing faster and more ragged as Felix lifted his hammer into the air . . . . when suddenly, startling all four of them so badly that they yelped out in unison with a shocked cry of alarm . . . Mike's eyes shot open and she sucked in a deep, trembling gasp, as if she'd spent the last harrowing five minutes underwater. Her back arched and a single spasm rippled through her limbs, and Ralph found himself practically having to choke back an audible cry as Vanellope, Calhoun and Felix all heaved a mortified sigh of relief.

Mike coughed violently for a few seconds, then blinked repeatedly and widened her good eye, turning her head slowly to look around her at each of the relieved, weary faces in turn, stopping when her gaze met with Ralph's. When she spoke, her voice was wheezing and frail, but as curious and obliviously sweet as ever.

"How . . . how did I do?"

Ralph still couldn't form the words to answer to her, but he no longer cared. Instead, he heaved out a deep, shuddering groan thick with too many conflicting emotions to identify, and squeezed his eyes shut as he curled his fingers around Mike's body and lifted her up against his chest in a tight, but cautious hug. It took all the restraint he could muster not to squeeze her as tightly as he could.

He heard Calhoun let out a low, relieved chuckle, and felt her clap one hand on his shoulder.

"Well . . . you didn't _die," _she muttered warmly, as Vanellope began patting her small hand in reassuring circles between his shoulder blades, and Felix resettled his grip on his hammer and angled himself to have better access to Mike's bruised and battered face peeping out from the crook of his arm; " . . . and you did manage to land _one _hit, even if it was technically illegal . . . so, I'd say you did alright, girlie. You know . . . . for a beginner."


	30. Chapter 29: Chivalry

**A/N: **Whew. This one took a lot out of me, guys. Sorry for the wait . . . due to numerous factors, not the least of which being a slight case of writer's fatigue, I'm afraid my updates may be coming out a little more infrequently from now on, like once a week instead of every three or four days.

On the bright side, there is an illustration for this chapter posted on my dA account. Enjoy! ^^

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 29: Chivalry_

"Almost done . . . just one more, and . . . there!" Felix declared brightly, lifting up his hammer after administering the final healing tap to Mike's last remaining injury - the large, dark bruise swelling over the spot on her ribcage where Nina had delivered her most vicious roundhouse kick.

Mike straightened up from her seated position against the outer wall of the boxing ring and ran her fingers over the regenerated skin with a wide-eyed coo of amazement.

"Oh my _word!" _she muttered to herself in marked awe, quickly inspecting herself all over and then shaking her head at the superintendent with a fascinated, quirking look. "Felix, I . . . . _wow. _You really weren't exaggerating about that!" she pointed to his gleaming hammer, and Felix quickly slipped it back into its holster and averted his eyes with a bashful smile. "Can it really fix _anything?"_

"Well, I . . . yes, I suppose it can. Ha . . . anything that's _broken, _that is!" he joked lamely, pulling the brim of his cap down to hide his slight flush of embarrassment.

Mike giggled, but Ralph and Vanellope - who had been kneeling next to her on the floor outside the ring, watching earnestly while he had 'fixed' her - both leaned back and rolled their eyes, uttering matching groans . . . he was almost positive, however, that Ralph's had an unmistakable note of relieved laughter hidden underneath it. His wife gave him an exasperated love tap from behind, and Felix turned to smile up at her.

"Aww, can it, _Fix-it," _she chided him teasingly, then stood up straight and - to his surprise - suddenly began taking her shoes off. Felix blinked, his smile wavering.

"Gumdrops? Er . . . what are you doing?"

"What do you _think?" _she narrowed her eyes and grinned devilishly, swinging her sling-back heels over her shoulder and sharply cracking her neck to one side. "Mike's had a turn . . . now I'm getting the itch for a little scrap, myself."

Felix's face fell.

"What? Oh, Tammy . . . . sweetheart, do you _have _to?" he moaned wearily, rising to his feet. "I was sort of hoping we could just call it a night and head home . . . . besides, you're not really _dressed _for it, are you?"

Calhoun's confident smirk only widened, and without hesitating she reached down, wadded the hem of her snug-fitting pencil skirt in one hand, and abruptly ripped off the bottom half of it in one wrenching motion, dropping the tattered strip of fabric in Felix's startled hands.

"There! Problem solved." She leaned over and planted a long, smiling kiss on his cheek, then turned and set off to find an open ring . . . but not before shooting them a final glance and winking salute over her shoulder. "No way am I leaving a Street Fighter party before I get to _fight _someone. Any of you kids want to come watch, be my guest!"

Felix watched his wife slip away into the mingling crowd in flustered silence, still holding the amputated tatter of her skirt in his hands. He looked back pleadingly at Ralph and the girls, but they only shrugged at him . . . letting out another exasperated groan, Felix set his jaw, gathered up the skirt fabric under one arm, and hurriedly set off in the direction Calhoun had gone.

"Tammy? Sweetheart? Wait for me!"

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph shook his head wearily as he watched his protagonist disappear quickly into the crowded grid of aisles between the boxing rings. Like Felix, he'd also been hoping that he might persuade the group to make a hasty retreat out of the party as soon as Mike was healed . . . . but of course, he ought to have known better. _How much success had he had that night trying to convince his friends to do __**anything**__ his way?_

Puckering her lips in an irritated pout, Vanellope stuffed her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt and idly turned to face them as Ralph stood up, then offered his hand to Mike and lifted her gently back onto her feet. As he did, he noticed that she was wearing a strange, vacant expression on her face, and that even as he helped her up, her gaze was fixed peculiarly on the spot where Felix and Calhoun had been standing a moment ago . . . but before he could give it further thought, Vanellope's voice drew his attention.

"I don't know about you two, but all this fight-game bunk is starting to _bore _me," she muttered. "_One_ blonde knucklehead beating somebody up is plenty for one night. Besides . . . any schmuck dumb enough to face off with Calhoun is just gonna get knocked out before you can say - "

"Comrades!"

Vanellope stopped in mid-sentence, and the three of them all turned to see Zangief bodily pushing his way toward them through the crowd, spreading his arms and addressing them with a jovial chortle.

"What a _match!" _the wrestler exclaimed with a short bellow of laughter, winking at Mike and eliciting an awkward smile from her as she inched a bit closer to Ralph. "Zangief saw _whole _thing, could hardly believe his own eyes! You're no _fighter_, Ms. Meekelangela, is obvious . . . but, Zangief has gone a few rounds before with the Nina Williams himself, and I must say_ . . . . _is bonified _miracle _she did not crush you like worm in first ten seconds!"

Vanellope snickered not-so-discretely to herself, and from the corner of his eye Ralph saw Mike's face flush lightly with embarrassment. Hoping to derail any further conversation about Mike's fight with Nina - which he would just as soon pretend had never happened - and slip away from Zangief's well-meaning, but boisterous attention as quickly as possible, Ralph opened his mouth, ready to politely mumble some excuse or another that would let them make their exit . . . . but before he could speak, he was suddenly beat to the punch by an unfamiliar voice following on the heels of Zangief's remark, breaking into their small circle with an overpoweringly smug tone of amusement.

"Oh, I don't know, Big Z . . . . miracle or not, I'd say the little lady managed to do pretty well for herself."

For some reason he wasn't consciously sure of, the strange voice gave Ralph an uncomfortable, irritated shudder, as if an invisible fly had just walked across his face. The owner of the voice shouldered his way in between himself and Zangief, crossing his arms and flashing the group a broad, pearly smile. Despite the dimness of the room, half of the man's chiseled, handsome expression was hidden beneath dark sunglasses . . . he was tanned, bare-chested, and glistening with a faint sheen of sweat, all of which served to further emphasize his sculpted, muscular physique. Ralph squinted at him dumbly for a few seconds, then almost had to stifle an audible groan when he abruptly recognized who it was. Zangief's smile flickered momentarily with a similar twinge of distaste, but he quickly recovered, and stepped back to let the shorter man closer into the circle.

"Ah . . . of course, where are Zangief's manners?" he muttered, his voice obviously struggling to mask a definite hint of disdain. "Comrades, let me introduce one of arcade's . . . ah . . . _best known, _fighters . . . Mr. John Carlt - "

"Whoa, whoa . . . easy there, Moscow," the man held up his hands and cut off Zangief with a patronizing chuckle. "Mr. Carlton was my father. The name's _Johnny Cage."_

Unnecessarily illustrating his point, Johnny spread his arms wider and puffed out his torso, gesturing to the two halves of his name that were tattooed across his chest and stamped into a gaudy, golden belt buckle secured around his waist, respectively.

"Yeah. We get it," Ralph muttered.

He had never actually spoken to Johnny Cage before, but the Mortal Kombat fighter had enough of a reputation around the arcade - as a vain, meat-headed playboy - that Ralph already knew he was the last character at the party with whom he wanted to get roped into a conversation. Ralph was once again a breath away from bluntly dismissing himself and the others on the pretext of having to go find the Fix-Its, when . . . to his dismay . . . Michelangela suddenly spoke up, her voice lilting curiously with a hint of recognition as she pushed a strand of hair from her eyes.

"Oooohh . . . I think I saw you fighting in the ring next to ours a little while ago, Mr. Cage," she smiled politely - and the debonair grin that Johnny flashed back at her immediately set Ralph's teeth on edge. "You seemed to be doing very well."

"Really? Ha! Well . . . thanks for noticing. But, ah . . . call me _Johnny,_ sweetheart." He clicked his teeth at her in a pseudo wink. "I could say the same thing about _you, _you know_. _I was just finishing up my little scuff with Lion when I happened to look over and see you knocking boots with the ol' Tekken assassin herself, and you know . . . for a non-fighter . . . you sure can take a beating, little lady."

Mike opened her mouth immediately to respond, then paused for a second, looking confused.

"Uh . . . . thank you?"

His smile broadening, Johnny Cage suddenly slid his sunglasses up onto his forehead and sidestepped in front of Zangief, angling himself directly toward Mike and looking down closely at her over the bulging flex of his pectorals. Ralph blinked, then bristled incredulously. The look in Johnny's eyes was enough to set the inside of his chest sparking with a hot flare of emotion that was part anger, and part something blind and reckless he couldn't quite identify . . . his brow narrowed sharply, and he became aware that he had clenched both his hands into fists without realizing it.

"So, tell me . . . _Michelangela, _it was, right?" Johnny said, his voice softening suavely, as if forgetting - or ignoring - the fact that Ralph and the others were still standing right next to them. " . . . what brings a little puzzle-game-doll like you to a place like _this?"_

Mike leaned away from him, stammering briefly and watching his subtly growing leer with a blank, nonplussed expression. Ralph suddenly realized that Johnny's hand was beginning to creep slowly up towards the side of her face, and the kindling heat in his chest was fanned instantly into an indignant flame. Without stopping to think, he planted both hands firmly on Mike's shoulders and pulled her away, inserting himself between her and Johnny and glaring down at the shirtless fighter.

"Sorry," he said flatly, ignoring Johnny's startled jump at finding himself suddenly face to face with a human wall of orange flannel and overalls. "But we have to be _going now."_

Zangief, Vanellope, and Mike each widened their eyes in surprise at his abrupt change in demeanor . . . but Ralph didn't notice them. He was staring uncompromisingly at Johnny, who was only taken aback for a split second before returning Ralph's scowl with an incensed look of his own.

"Uuhhh . . . sorry . . . _who _are you, again?"

Ralph felt Mike's hand touch lightly on his arm as she leaned around to answer for him.

"This is Wreck-It Ralph!" she blurted obviously with an amused touch of laughter, as if she were genuinely surprised to find that there was anyone in the arcade who didn't know who he was.

Johnny made a face and ran his eyes belittlingly up and down Ralph's body.

"Oh. Right. Now I recognize you . . . you're the _bad guy_ from that antique platformer over by Space Invaders, aren't you? What's it called . . . _Fun-with-Fixing_?"

"Yeah, that's right. Fun-with-Fixing, Jr.," Ralph grumbled. "Now, if you _don't_ mind . . . like I said, we're _leaving."_

Ralph shot a pointed, confirming look at Vanellope, then turned to grab Mike's hand . . . but before he could, Johnny suddenly raised one arm and gave him a halting push on the chest.

"Hey! Just hold your horses there for a minute, _Tanto," _Johnny snapped, then looked inquiringly at Mike. "Sweetheart . . . is this bad guy_ harassing_ you?"

Ralph started, reeling indignantly and darkening his face into a furious, disbelieving stare, his nostrils flaring and his teeth clenching. Mike raised one eyebrow confusedly, her eyes darting once between them.

"What? N-no, of course not!" she answered. "Ralph is my friend! He's the one who brought me here!"

Johnny froze, then opened his mouth slowly in a silent inhale of understanding.

"Ooooooh. I see. _Now_ the Cage gets it."

Despite the disdain evident in the reply, Ralph's bristling temper eased back a degree. His glare softened and he unclenched his fists, hoping this meant that Johnny - like Zangief, earlier in the evening - was about to respectfully back off . . . . but the next second, to his dismay, Johnny instead darted around Ralph with an evasive spin and slunk up to Mike from the opposite side, startling her and making her whirl around with a small gasp. He seized her hand in his and leaned close to her, acting as if he were trying to be secretive, but contrarily speaking at full volume so that anyone could hear.

"Listen, Angie . . . can I call you Angie? . . . . Angie, baby. Listen. I can tell you're smart girl, so I'm not gonna mince words with you . . . . you _might_ want to reconsider who you're spending your time with."

The words, though not even directed towards him, hit Ralph like a punch in the gut, paralyzing him for a moment with the frightened realization that the very moment he'd been dreading had suddenly, without warning, come upon him.

_Now that she has other people to spend time with . . . . what's going to happen, when she realizes she has a choice . . . . between them, and __**you**__?_

"I consider myself to be a pretty decent judge of wom . . . er . . . . of _character," _Johnny continued, " . . . and I gotta say, Angie . . . . you strike me right away as someone who can _do better."_

Mike, who had been listening with a somewhat dumbfounded expression, suddenly twitched sharply and narrowed her eyes. She gingerly pulled her hand out of Johnny's grasp.

"What . . . what are you talking about?"

Ralph was still struggling to regain himself when, to his relief, Vanellope jumped over and yanked on Johnny Cage's pant leg, her voice piping up in a shrill jab.

"Hey, Hollywood! . . . you _deaf, _or something? The man said we're _leaving!"_

Johnny just rolled his eyes and waved her off, then tilted his face suggestively toward Mike.

"I'm _talking _about this walking gut sack you're out with!" he jerked one thumb in Ralph's direction. "In case nobody told you, sweetheart? He's a _bad guy. _And a not-too-_bright _one, at that . . . . and besides, it seems to me like he and his little toady here are trying to make all your decisions _for _you. I haven't heard you say whether or not _you _want to leave yet."

Ralph's ears perked up, ignoring Johnny's insults and darting his eyes hopefully toward Mike, his heart leaping a beat higher into his throat. Mike's face softened perplexedly at the statement, and she began to chew her lip as she met Ralph's gaze for a few still, tangibly silent seconds. Then, after a short, conflicted moment, she abruptly averted her eyes from him, and Ralph felt himself go hollow, his spirits plummeting even before she spoke.

"Well . . . I . . . . I mean . . . _no, _I'm not . . . . _positive, _if I'm ready to leave yet . . . . but . . . but I - "

"There! Hear that, _pituitary case?" _Johnny cut her off and crowed triumphantly, gesturing toward Mike and raising his eyebrows at Ralph with a self-righteous frown. "She said it herself! The lady _doesn't want to leave with you._ Now, why don't you and that little . . . _candy, _thing . . . make like a tree, and go _bum_ somebody else out?"

Vanellope bristled furiously, but Ralph was barely listening anymore. His eyes were fixed unblinkingly on Mike, who . . . to his slowly deepening hurt . . . was pointedly avoiding looking at him. He watched her, almost holding his breath, waiting anxiously for her to say something, _anything, _in his defense . . . . to even _look _at him, to give the slightest indication that his fears were wrong . . . . _that if faced with the choice, she __**would **__choose him . . . . _but she didn't. The seconds ticked by, and with each passing instant that Mike didn't speak or look up at him, the empty, hollow feeling deep inside him grew larger and more painful.

"Mike?" he whispered - almost pleadingly - beneath his breath, not even sure if he wanted to be heard. She began fidgeting with the knot tied in the sleeves of her smock, but still wouldn't lift her eyes to him.

Johnny Cage looked back at Mike's down-turned face, then grinned and huffed loudly as if in satisfied confirmation.

"Yeah . . . I thought as much. Come on, Angie . . . . let the _Cage _take you for a walk and show you how a _good guy_ treats a lady."

Without waiting for her to answer, Johnny put his hands on Mike's shoulders and spun her roughly around in an about-face. He snaked one arm stealthily around her bare waist, then pulled her flush up against his side, so forcefully that the contact of their hips made a dull, almost threatening _thump._ Mike jumped and cried out faintly in alarm, jerking her head up to look at him . . . and as she did, Ralph caught a flashing glimpse of her expression. Her lips were parted silently in confusion and distress - her eyes were wide, and the skin beneath them had suddenly gone pale with a dawning pall of something that he realized he had not seen on her face in what felt like half a lifetime, but that was so familiar it transported him instantaneously to the moment that he had first laid eyes on her. She was _afraid._

It was like a switch flipped inside of him. Within that single flash of genuine fear on her face, Ralph instantly forgot about everything else. Every trace of hurt or anxiety or inner turmoil aching inside of him was erased . . . and in one seamless, blind transition . . . replaced with rage.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Vanellope furrowed her brow disgustedly as Johnny Cage suddenly grabbed hold of Mike and roughly, almost possessively pulled her up against his side . . . but just as she was raising her voice to snap at him again, the words stopped halfway up her throat and were instead transmuted into a squeak of surprise as Ralph suddenly erupted into a snarl so loud and menacing that Johnny froze with his arm around Mike's waist, looking over his shoulder just in time to see one enormous palm shooting straight toward his face. In one savage motion, Ralph clamped his hand around Johnny's head like a vice, wrenched him away from Mike, and slammed him face-first straight down to the floor, his limbs flailing in shock and his thickly muscled chest hitting the concrete with a sound like a raw steak slapping onto a table.

Mike yelped and jumped away, her eyes darting rapidly between Ralph's panting, seething face and Johnny's back, momentarily motionless as he lay face down on the floor. Vanellope's jaw dropped. Zangief, who had been observing the proceedings of the previous five minutes in politely withdrawn silence, suddenly snapped back to attention and hastily took Ralph by the shoulders, trying to coax him back away from Johnny.

"Wrecking man, _no!" _he hissed, his eyes glancing anxiously around them. "Please, you _mustn't, _not here_ . . . . _is sacred, unwritten rule of all fighting games! No _sucker punches _outside of ring!"

But Ralph ignored him, shaking him away with one blunt jerk of his shoulders as he leaned over and growled down at the back of Johnny's head.

"HANDS OFF_, _Cage! You _touch her again_, and I'll put you down for _good!"_

Vanellope's tensed shoulders gradually began to relax by degrees until her arms were hanging slack at her sides again. All she could do was stare speechlessly and shake her head at the train-wreck unfolding in front of her.

_Oh, for Pete's sake . . . . Ralph, you idiot, what are you __**doing**__?_

_She knew that voice, she recognized that searing look that was etched onto his face. He wasn't losing his temper . . . . he had already lost it. There would be no reasoning with the big galoot now, not until his fit of anger had run its course . . . and in this case, that probably meant . . . ._

After a few seconds of stunned silence, Johnny slowly peeled himself off the floor and propped his torso up on his beefy arms, lifting his face and narrowing his eyes incredulously at Ralph. They held each other's gaze in a menacing stare-down as Johnny rose back to his feet, his trademark sunglasses now cracked and missing a lens.

"You, uh . . . . you wanna try running that by me _again, _tubby?" he muttered darkly, the blow to the floor apparently having done nothing but provoke him.

Ralph's glare intensified as drew himself up to his full, towering height.

"You heard me_. _I said _keep your hands off the girl."_

Johnny, obviously not intimidated despite Ralph's three-foot advantage over him, coolly reached up and removed his smashed sunglasses from his forehead, tossing them blindly over his shoulder.

"Oh, yeah?" he quipped, shooting a backward glance at Mike, who recoiled visibly under his gaze. " . . . or _what?"_

"Or I'll _break them off," _Ralph answered. His tone was deadly serious.

Vanellope stifled a small groan and began rubbing her forehead with one hand as she looked back and forth between the two of them.

"Leave it to a pair of muscle-bound _block_heads!" she muttered to herself, then shot an incriminating glower at Mike - who actually still had the nerve to look confused - and hissed at her angrily under her breath. "Well? Don't just _stand _there, Chickadee! _Say something!"_

Mike just opened her mouth and shrugged helplessly, and Vanellope threw her hands up and grit her teeth with frustration. _There was only one way this was going to end . . . ._

"Alright then, Tons-of-Fun . . . . if it's a fight you want, I'm _more _than game! You and me, _baby fat, _right now_ . . . . _just pick a ring!" Johnny sneered, holding his arms out and gesturing to the room around them.

At that, Vanellope's ears perked up and her grimace vanished with a sudden, vivid flash of memory. Forgetting about her exasperation, she frantically jumped forward and began pulling at Ralph's hand, not stopping until she finally forced him to look down at her.

"Ralph, _no!" _she urged him desperately. "Don't let him goad you up onto a stage! Remember what happened in _DDR?" _

Ralph just narrowed his eyes at her and shook her off with a dismissive flick of his wrist.

"Yes. I don't care." He turned back to Johnny, and she could practically feel the heat from his scorching glare as he gritted savagely between his teeth, "Doesn't matter to me. _You _pick the ring, pretty-boy."

Johnny lowered his arms to his eyes and regarded Ralph scathingly for another moment . . . then, Vanellope felt a slight shiver of apprehension run through her as the stuntman's glare slowly melted into a broad, cunning smile.

"Alright, then. Johnny knows _just _the one. Follow me, chubs . . . . if you're still hungry for a _beat-down, _that is." Johnny pushed roughly past Ralph and Zangief, then paused to look back once more at Mike, who had stood rooted to the spot throughout the altercation and was now watching them with a furrow of distress slowly deepening on her brow. "This won't take a sec, Angie. I'll stuff this gorilla in two shakes . . . . and then, you and I can get back to our little chat."

Then, without waiting for Mike or any of the others to respond, Johnny set off at a brisk, confident stride towards the center of the enormous room, several characters stepping out of his path as he went. Ralph turned on his heel and went after him without so much as glancing back at either Mike or Vanellope. Zangief shot them a concerned, helpless shrug, then followed along as well, leaving the two of them standing there alone and watching with open mouths as the parade of roiling testosterone marched away through the crowd.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Mike had barely even begun to process the overwhelming swarm of conflicting emotions that were springing up inside of her when, suddenly, she realized that Vanellope was shouting something at her. She tore her eyes away from the direction Ralph and the others had gone, looked down, and was genuinely shocked to see that the dark-haired little girl was pinning her with a scathing, furious glare, almost as frightening and inexplicable to her as the one Ralph had been wearing just seconds ago.

"Wh . . . . what?" she mumbled blankly, her brain staggering with the influx of new, disorienting feelings.

This response seemed to aggravate Vanellope's temper to a breaking point, and for a brief instant Mike half expected the little girl to actually try and strike her. If she weren't looking at it with her own eyes, she would have never believed that a face so angelic could ever be contorted into an expression of such anger and contempt.

"What? _What?" _Vanellope parroted incredulously. "That's all you've got to say for yourself, is _what!?"_

Mike flinched. "What . . . what am I _supposed _to say?"

"_What are you sup - ! . . . _you were _supposed _to tell Johnny to take a hike!" Vanellope sputtered, as if unable to believe that this wasn't obvious. "You were supposed to _stick up _for Ralph! Now he's going to get the stuffing kicked out of him by that creep . . . . or worse, he's going to break down one of the rings and _humiliate _himself all over again . . . and it's all your _fault!_"

It was the first time in Mike's life that anyone had ever spoken to her that way. For another fleeting, awful moment, she just stared back at her in shock, not knowing what to say or do . . . . and then, slowly . . . . something happened. She felt, tangibly, as something changed inside of her . . . with a sensation like a heavy stone being rolled over to its other side, the gnawing, empty feeling of dread filling her stomach abruptly transformed into something solid, something hot and violent. All at once, she was no longer guilty or confused . . . nor was she merely angry. The anger was weighted with something else, something strange to her, and before she fully understood what it was, she heard her own voice rising up out of her throat in a tone so sharp and unpleasant that she almost didn't recognize herself.

"My fault? How . . . how is this _my _fault!?" she demanded. "I don't even know why Ralph is so upset!"

"Oh, come _on, _Chickadee! Enough with the _innocent_ _ditz _act already!" Vanellope snarled back. "'You don't know why Ralph's _angry?'_ Maybe it's because you just stood there and let that jerk hit on you _right _in front of him! You didn't even _try _to stop him!"

"What are you talkingabout? All I did was answer a question! He asked me if I wanted to leave, and I _didn't! _All I did was tell the truth!"

_"No, _what you _did _was hang Ralph out to dry! Don't you _get it, _Mike? Johnny's a first-class _sleazeball, _everyone knows it! Ralph was just trying to _defend _you . . . and what did you do when Cage started laying into him? Nothing! You wouldn't so much as look him in the eye!"

Mike froze for an instant, taken aback, as an unexpected surge of realization threatened to overwhelm her. When she opened her mouth to respond, her voice trailed off into a faltering stammer.

"Well, that was only because I . . . . because . . . . because I . . . . I . . . . "

The words wouldn't come, and all of a sudden Mike found herself looking inward for an answer, and finding none.

_Why . . . . why __**hadn't **__she looked at him?_

_From almost the moment he'd first spoken to her, Mike knew there was something about Johnny she didn't like, something that made her unconsciously shrink back from of him, almost as if he were cold or slimy to the touch . . . . and yet . . . . in that moment, when he'd said those things to Ralph . . . those things that she had known were cruel and untrue, even if she didn't fully understand them at the time . . . . when Ralph had looked at her, and said her name . . . . he had been waiting for her to say something._

_And now, looking back on it . . . . she realized that she had deliberately chosen not to._

_Why?_

A perturbing feeling began to creep over her, and with a thick, uncomfortable swallow, Mike deliberately pushed it back down and clung fast to the few remaining cords of her anger.

" . . . well, it . . . . it doesn't matter!" she snapped weakly at Vanellope, narrowing her eyes and trying to mask her nagging irresolution. "Besides . . . c-creep, or no . . . Johnny . . . Johnny was _right _about one thing. Y-you . . . you and Ralph _do _try to make my decisions for me, and . . . you know what? I don't _like it!_"

Vanellope's glare flickered, stunned for only a brief moment before hardening again.

"Well of _course _we do . . . . only because you're still too _stupid _to make them on your own! We just want to keep you from _hurting _yourself, you big dummy!"

"So why did _you _encourage me to fight Nina Williams, then!?"

"Because, _dingbat, _I thought you would _LOSE!"_

Mike opened her mouth to shout back, then froze, her eyes widening as the weight of Vanellope's reply suddenly sunk in. Her bristling anger was momentarily pushed aside and replaced by a startling well of hurt.

"Va . . . Vanellope . . . you . . . _wanted _me to lose?"

Vanellope blinked, her face going blank as she abruptly realized what she had just said. She hesitated for a moment, her eyes widening and her mouth hovering open as she stammered for a response.

"I . . . I . . . I mean . . . n-no, I didn't . . . I didn't want you to _lose, _as in . . . as in, you know . . . get really _hurt, _or anything, I just . . . just . . . . "

Slowly, the hurt inside her twisted back into anger, and Mike narrowed her eyes down at the little girl with a blaze of vicious resentment she would have previously not believed herself capable of feeling toward someone like Vanellope.

"You . . . you just wanted to see me _humiliated . . . _didn't you?" she grit quietly between her teeth.

Vanellope shifted her eyes guiltily for another second, then swallowed and steeled herself once more.

"It was supposed to be a _joke," _she snapped. "And . . . and besides, I should have known you'd just _cheat _with that stupid brush again . . . just like you did in the race! You know what your problem is, _'Angie?' _You think you can do whatever you want, and that if you act _sweet _and _dumb _enough about it, everyone will just _let you . . . . _including Ralph! Well, I've got news for you, sister . . . you _can't!_ I don't care how long you've been plugged in, and I don't care if you have a _glitch . . . _it's time for you to start thinking about someone besides your_self_!"

Mike's jaw dropped, working soundlessly as she bristled with furious disbelief and struggled to come up with something truly crushing to say in return . . . but nothing came to her. Vanellope scoffed at her stunned silence, turning away and glancing back coldly over one shoulder.

"Fine . . . just _stand _there if you want. _I'm _going to go and try to stop Ralph before he does something he'll regret . . . because that's what _real friends _do."

Without another word, Vanellope clenched her fists determinedly and stormed off in the direction the others had gone. Mike watched her go, still frozen in shock and anger, and for another moment, she remained rooted to the spot, a clamoring chorus of different thoughts and indignations all running through her head at once. Beneath them all, one small, quiet voice was still whispering to her, telling her things that she knew were true, but that she didn't want to believe . . . . she shook herself, stubbornly pushed the quiet voice deep down into the pit of her stomach, and set off after Vanellope before it had a chance to resurface.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Aaaah . . . here we are!" Johnny declared, coming to a sudden halt and spreading his arms wide. "Nice and empty for us, too!"

Ralph slowed to a stop behind him, his scowl hardening as he glanced around. They were standing at the edge of a large, fenced-off square that looked similar to the other rings around them, except that it was not a lofted platform . . . . it was simply a section of the concrete floor that had been cordoned off with posts and ropes. It was also at least twice the size of the other rings.

"This is where some of us _pros _like to spar when we visit Street Fighter for a practice session . . . . you know, when we're actually taking a fight _seriously," _Johnny glanced back at Ralph and grinned smugly. "None of that sissy canvas flooring here. You sure you're still up for this, _tiny?"_

Ralph's glare grew, if possible, even more venomous, his fists tightening at his sides.

"Just _get in the ring, _Cage," he growled.

Johnny shrugged and held up is hands in mock obedience. "Anything you say, pal."

"Er . . . Ralph?" Zangief's voice came timidly from behind him as Johnny swung himself over the ropes with ease. "You _positive_ this is good idea?"

Ralph didn't answer. He didn't even look back at his Bad-Anon friend as he pushed down the ropes with one hand and followed Johnny somewhat clumsily into the ring. He was beyond the point of rethinking anything . . . he had grown so angry, he'd practically forgotten why he was fighting Johnny in the first place, and it didn't matter to him the slightest bit. All he knew now was that his temper had reached the rare, dangerous peak at which he actually crossed back over from frenzy into lucidity, so that instead of simply lashing out at everything in his path like a wrecking ball, he could concentrate the whole brunt of his fury onto a single target . . . . in this case, Johnny Cage. Even in spite of the seething anger . . . Ralph couldn't remember the last time he'd been so looking forward to wrecking something.

The moment the two of them stepped into the empty ring, several nearby characters took notice, murmuring interestedly amongst themselves and moving over to observe the new match-up. Within seconds, a sizable crowd of onlookers had assembled.

Johnny strolled casually to the far corner of the ring, rolling his neck and stretching his arms behind him as he went. He turned around and began flexing his chest and abdomen, nodding toward Ralph and letting out an open, scoffing laugh.

"Listen . . . I understand you're no _fighter, _so let me clue you in a little on how these things are done. We're playing by _street _rules, here . . . . which means there _are _no rules, except for two. Rule one . . . no ring-outs. The fight isn't over until one of us is lying brain-dead on the floor. Rule two . . . no _shirts. _This is a _spar, _not a tea-party . . . so lose the rag, Wreck-It."

Ralph growled deep in his throat, but pressed his lips together and silently, reluctantly, unhooked the strap of his overalls. He knew perfectly well that Johnny was only trying to humiliate him . . . but he didn't care. He refused to give him the satisfaction. Hesitating for just an instant, Ralph took a deep breath, set his jaw, and - like tearing off a band-aid - forced himself to pull his pair of T-shirts together over his head in one fell swoop, his skin prickling with a combination of the fresh air and an inner twinge of embarrassment. Forbidding himself from letting his awkwardness show, Ralph tossed his shirts behind the post in his corner and gruffly tried to pull his overalls as high up over his waist as possible, trying not to think about the stubborn, slight bulge of his stomach that refused to be concealed.

Johnny glanced once around the ring at the circle of curious spectators, then let out a loud, deliberate laugh and jerked his head toward Ralph.

_"Wow. _Nice, uh . . . _ha . . . _nice _spread _there, Wreck-It. It take a lot of _work _to keep up that physique? You'll have to let me in on your secret sometime."

A few of the onlookers snickered. Ralph ignored them, lowering his head further beneath his shoulders and raising his fists to chest height, deliberately blocking out everything else around him and setting his sights menacingly on Johnny.

Seeing that Ralph wasn't going to take the bait of his insult, Johnny smirked again and cracked his neck a final time, then spread his knees and dropped quickly into a practiced fighting stance, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet and holding his arms poised at the ready.

There was a moment of a tense, baited silence. Then, just as in Mike's fight with Nina, the ring itself seemed to suddenly register the presence of the two combatants waiting inside of it, and from out of nowhere came the automated, blaring sound of the starting bell.

BBRRRIING!

With that sound, the last remaining layer of Ralph's self restraint was snapped like a taut cord, and he at last gave himself over to the blind, destructive rage that had been steadily building up inside of him inch by inch since the moment Johnny Cage had first barged in to the evening.

The bell ended, the spectators began jeering . . . and with a bellowing snarl, Ralph lunged into the ring.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Ralph! _No!" _Vanellope cried out futilely, fighting her way through to the edge of the concrete ring just seconds too late.

She skidded to a halt and gripped the bottom rope with both hands, watching in helpless frustration as Ralph and Johnny charged simultaneously at each other . . . . this time, there was no hesitation, no strategic pause before the beginning of the fight. Ralph immediately balled both hands together into a single, enormous wrecking ball and swung his arms toward Johnny like a lateral pendulum with enough force to level a small building . . . . but the experienced fighter easily evaded it, ducking down to the floor and sliding one leg in a rapid, circular kick that knocked Ralph's feet straight out from under him, sending him toppling to the ground with a loud, heavy _thud. _

The spectators cheered, and Vanellope bit her lip and darted her gaze wildly around the perimeter of the ring until she spotted Zangief standing behind the post to her right. Unnoticed by the other characters crowding up against the ropes, Vanellope grunted with effort as she pushed her way past at least a dozen pairs of shins until she finally reached Ralph's corner of the ring and - in reluctant lieu of her usual human observation tower, who was at the moment otherwise preoccupied - scaled quickly up Zangief's side and perched herself on his muscular shoulder, making him jump and jerk his head sharply to look at her.

"Oh! Is _you, _little candy girl!"

"Yeah, yeah . . . . Zangief, listen to me. You _have_ to get in there and stop this fight!"

Zangief knit his brow and shrugged regretfully, forcing Vanellope to tighten her grip to keep from falling.

"I am sorry, but . . . . is nothing I can do. Zangief tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't listen. Please . . . do not distress yourself overly, little one. Johnny may be formidable opponent_, _but Ralph is like human _wall_ . . . will take awful lot to hurt him _too _badly."

Vanellope narrowed her eyes and sighed, turning to look anxiously back into the ring, where Ralph had quickly rolled back onto his feet and was now swinging punch after lumbering punch toward Johnny, each of which he was easily avoiding.

"I'm not worried about what _Johnny's _going to do to him_," _she muttered, following the pair of combatants from one side of the ring to the other with her eyes. "I'm worried about what he may end up doing to him_self . . . "_

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As Mike made her way toward the ring to which Vanellope had led her, she gradually became aware of a sporadic, lurching pattern of noises growing louder and louder the closer she drew . . . . she strained her ears to listen as she was elbowing her way through the crowd, and all at once her face paled and her heart gave a frantic jolt as she realized what they were. They were the sounds of punches . . . sharp, violent punches packing into flesh with erratic frequency, and after every impact there came a fresh burst of cheering from the gathering of characters around her.

As she pushed nearer to the ring, Mike bounced repeatedly on her toes and craned her neck to try and see over the heads of the other spectators, but it was no use. It wasn't until she finally managed to work her way up the very edge of the ring that she caught her first true glimpse of the fight . . . just in time to see Johnny Cage's foot spinning through the air in a ferocious, roundhouse kick, cracking Ralph square in the jaw and sending him staggering to one side, just managing to catch himself on one hand before he fell to the floor.

The moment she saw him cringing with pain, Mike was immediately overcome with a shocking, almost blinding surge of both horror and guilt, because all at once she suddenly understood why Ralph had tried so hard to keep her from fighting Nina Williams. The realization only grew steadily stronger and more painful as she watched Johnny follow up his kick with a smooth, deadly series of lateral punches that pummeled into Ralph's bare chest and stomach with frightening rapidity, pushing him back further and further with sharper and sharper grimaces of pain until she found herself actually struggling to keep from crying his name out and leaping into the ring herself.

_Was this really what it had been like for him to watch her being pummeled in the ring? This was what she had put him through, without even realizing it . . . ?_

Johnny finished off his hammering assault with a shot to the face that finally sent Ralph sprawling to his back on the ground, and Mike forced herself to look away, breathing heavily and blinking back hysterical cries of guilt as the spectators roared with approval. Trying desperately to look anywhere but in the ring, Mike turned and saw Zangief and Vanellope watching the fight from what must have been Ralph's corner. Swallowing thickly and turning her eyes miserably down to the floor as another flurry of punching sounds blasted in her ears, she kept her grip on the rope and pulled herself along it hand over hand until she was standing beside Vanellope and Zangief.

"Is . . . is he going to be okay?"

They both turned sharply to look at her, Zangief meeting her gaze with a sympathetic look of uncertainty, and Vanellope - hanging from his shoulder - simply darkening with a fierce glare when she saw who it was, then deliberately ignoring her question and turning back to the fight.

"Is hard to say, Ms. Meekelangela . . . " the bearded man muttered doubtfully. " . . . Ralph is certainly _sturdy, _but . . . he has yet to land single hit on Johnny."

Mike bit her lip anxiously, and had to force herself to look back into the ring. Her heart began to throb almost painfully when she noticed the scuffs and red marks that were accumulating on Ralph's exposed skin . . . in particular one ugly, purple bruise that was already swelling his left eye nearly shut, reminding her cruelly of the one that she had accidentally given him on the night they first met. She gripped the ring post with both hands and stared anxiously, her fingers digging into the wood as she watched Ralph staggering resiliently to his feet once more.

Johnny had pulled back for a moment to catch his breath, pacing around Ralph in a wide, slow circle and letting out a confident snort of laughter between each inhale.

"I can do this all night, big boy!" he taunted loudly. "Come on . . . I know you're no fighter_, _but _please . . ._ can't you even get in _one _punch? I'm startin' to get _bored _over here!"

Ralph answered him with a savage growl, charging again with his right fist pulled back for a crushing blow that swung and missed, Johnny jumping aside swiftly out of its path.

"Come on, Ralphie!" Mike heard Vanellope shout beside her. "You can take this chump!"

"You must _calm down_, Wrecking Man!" Zangief added, amplifying his already booming voice with his hands cupped around his mouth. "Johnny is playing off anger, like man poking mad dog with stick! _Stop letting yourself be goaded by stick, Ralph!"_

Bolstered slightly by their voices, Mike opened her mouth to try and call out an encouragement of her own . . . but the only sound that found its way out was a faint whimper as Ralph swung and missed a second time.

"Gotta be faster than that!" Johnny crowed, ducking out of the way and straightening up with a triumphant smirk . . . then, as he was turning around, his eyes happened to fall randomly across Mike's face, and when he saw her watching him, he paused to shoot her a brief, pleasantly surprised grin.

"Heeeyy, Angie!" he called to her from the center of the ring. "How you likin' the show so far? You think _this _is good, wait until you see my - "

_BBBLLAM!_

Johnny's split-second of vain distraction was all that Ralph needed . . . his gargantuan fist came swinging from behind like a muscled pendulum and slammed into the side of his head with such force that Johnny was thrown clean off his feet and sent zooming across the ring like a stunned rag-doll, ricocheting off the ropes and then flopping to the ground.

There was a second of shocked silence . . . then, the crowd erupted into a laughing cheer, Vanellope and Zangief triumphantly calling out louder than any of them.

_"That's it, _Knuckles!" Vanellope hollered gleefully. "Show that Hollywood hack how it's _done!"_

Mike breathed out a rushing sigh of relief and clapped one hand over her chest, her heart still palpitating wildly.

_Please, _she pleaded silently to herself, watching anxiously as Ralph turned to square off warily with Johnny, still lying motionless on the floor . . . . _**please**__, don't get up again . . . don't get up again, don't get up again . . . . _

But the next second, Johnny's back and shoulders were rippling with a recuperative shudder as he heaved himself off the floor, rising back to his feet and wincing as he shook himself again. For once, he said nothing, but simply regarded Ralph with a loathing glare for a few seconds before letting out a savage cry and springing forward, attacking with twice as much speed and ferocity as before. Ralph thrust up both arms protectively in front of him and managed to deflect the first blow, but only just . . . Johnny's fist glanced off to the left, and he followed through with a side-winder kick that made crushing contact and knocked the enormous forearms aside.

Ralph was only thrown off for an instant . . . he caught himself with both hands on the floor and pushed off again, leading with his shoulder and plowing the entirety of his formidable bulk straight into Johnny's chest, audibly knocking the wind from him and almost sprawling him back out on the floor. Johnny stumbled backward and recovered his balance, then lunged again . . . he landed one biting punch on Ralph's cheek before he could heave himself upright again, then tried to land another with the opposite arm . . . but Ralph caught the fist in his left hand and clamped down on it in an unbreakable grip, holding Johnny in place long enough to slam him with another full-body blow from the right.

The crowd was in hysterics, Vanellope and Zangief included. Mike felt her spirits lifting - but only just - as the fight raged on, Ralph and Johnny staggering back and forth across the ring as they exchanged blow after bruising blow, the former now managing to work in one successful hit for about every fourth of the latter. Her insides were still convulsing with faint, hollow shudders every time she had to watch a fist or a foot dig into Ralph's body, but the crushing grip of guilt was gradually loosening its hold on her . . . . until, after a few more minutes of intense battling, Mike suddenly noticed, with a sharp pang of anxiety, that Ralph was beginning to slow down. The swinging strikes of his arms were slowly weakening before her eyes, his chest beginning to heave harder and harder.

Johnny was bearing down on him, darting from side to side with increasing speed and determination even as Ralph's energy was visibly waning at the same rate. The two of them were working their way slowly across the ring towards Ralph's corner, and Mike tightened her nervous grip on the post as she watched them drawing closer and closer, flinching each time Johnny's fists found purchase on Ralph's defending forearms.

"Vanellope . . . we have to _do _something!" she heard herself crying out suddenly, shooting a desperate glance up at the little girl still clinging to Zangief's shoulder.

Vanellope started, then tore her eyes quickly away from the fight and answered Mike's cry with a poisonous glare.

_"We?" _she snapped incredulously. "I think _you've _done enough to him already!"

Mike's face went blank.

In spite of the deafening roar of the crowd all around them . . . in spite of the loud, fervent pulsing of her own heartbeat filling her ears . . . Vanellope's words cut through the sound of everything else and seemed to pierce straight into her heart. Mike didn't know if it was the tension of the moment, or the sudden culmination of something else, darker and uglier, that had been silently growing inside of her since their bitter argument earlier . . . . but for some reason, at that exact instant, those words were the last straw. The anger and defiance that had been subdued into momentary dormancy by her concern for Ralph reared their heads once more, and Mike found herself suddenly consumed with a senseless, distorting fury of pent up hurt and confusion . . . . and it was at that very moment that the post she was leaning on gave a violent, vibrating shudder as Ralph was thrown bodily against it by one last devastating punch from Johnny, who then fell back for a short moment to catch his breath. Zangief and Vanellope let out simultaneous cries of shock, and Mike jumped back in alarm as Ralph slid down to the floor in front of her, not even realizing that she and the others were standing directly behind him.

What Mike did next, she did absolutely without thinking. It was as if the conflicting storm of unconscious emotion whirling inside of her finally became so turbulent and powerful that it forewent the funneling channel of thought andseized direct control of her body . . . and she yielded immediately to its command, without the slightest cognizant hesitation.

In the split-second that Ralph was leaning, collapsed and stunned, against the post in the corner of the ring . . . his bare back pressing against the wood and his arms draped over the ropes as he blinked dizzily at Johnny, who was holding back and panting for breath as he prepared to deliver his finishing blow . . . .

. . . in that split-second . . . . Michelangela grabbed Ralph's forearm with both hands, heaved the upper half of her body over the edge of the ring, and fervently crushed her lips into the side of his face.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph had not yet recovered from the fuzzy, throbbing pain of Johnny's most recent punch when all of a sudden . . . . like a lightning bolt piercing through a dark sky with a blinding flash of stillness and clarity . . . . he felt something else - something soft, and startling, and cool to the touch of his hot, perspiring skin. It pressed into his cheek for only a few reeling seconds, making his good eye shoot wide open and the rest of him freeze in place, as if paralyzed by an electric shock.

Then, as quickly as it came, it was gone.

All at once, everything seemed to stop and become silent . . . even the pulsing ache from his black eye was muted into the background as Ralph turned his head to look over his shoulder in the direction from which the kiss had come. He blinked his good eye, and Mike's blank, wide-eyed face blinked back at him, her lips still drawn in a delicate pucker.

For two seconds, they stared silently at each other.

Then, in the corner of his eye, Ralph saw the heel of Johnny's boot flying toward him through the air - followed closely by the rest of him - too swiftly for him to even think about ducking.

_TTHHWACK!_

A stiff, hammering blow of pain - so forceful that it almost numbed itself in a shuddering recoil before the full impact had even come - hit him in the side of the head like a locomotive hitting a brick wall. Stars seared behind his eyes and everything went spinning around him in a blind whirl as the post he was leaning against gave way with an earsplitting crack, followed by the collective gasps and cries of several voices at once.

The last thing Ralph felt was the floor coming up to meet him bluntly from behind . . . . and then, just as the final faint, cool trace of the kiss was fading swiftly from his sweltering consciousness - so swiftly, in fact, that he wondered fleetingly if he hadn't only imagined it - everything went dark.

**A/N: **Sweet, freaking, _glob, _this was a difficult chapter.

To anyone who may be a fan of the real Mortal Kombat Johnny Cage, let me take this moment to apologize for the abuse heaped upon him in this chapter. His canon personality is by no means the royal D-bag presented here, but suffice it to say, it was necessary for this scenario, so please to forgive my liberties taken in this area.


	31. Chapter 30: The Rhythm of the Night

**A/N; **Gird your loins, good readers . . . THE FLUFF STORM APPROACHETH.

**Disclaimer:** I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 30: The Rhythm of the Night_

" . . . . believe even _you _could be that stupid . . . you had to do it right then, right at the _worst possible moment!? _You couldn't have just _waited _until . . . wait . . . wait, hold on a sec, I think he's coming to! Ralph? _Ralphie-boy, _can you hear me?"

The shrill voice seeped slowly into the blanket of darkness and silence enveloping him, growing steadily clearer until it pushed through to the inside and pierced his mind with an unwelcome pang of consciousness . . . unwelcome, because the instant he awoke, he became once more aware of the symphony of irritating pains aching and prickling his entire body in a hundred places at once.

Ralph groaned softly through closed lips and gradually blinked open his right eye, the left still swollen uselessly shut.

The first thing that met his vision was a dim blur of black and pinkish hues, a fuzzy outline that solidified into Vanellope's face as his sight gradually became clear again. She was kneeling on his chest and peering down anxiously at his throbbing, battered face . . . as soon as their eyes met, she leaned back and gave an enormous moan of relief.

"Oh, sweet mother of _monkey _milk!" she breathed wearily, running one hand down her face, then chuckling nervously. "You gave us a _scare, _there, Stinkbrain!"

Still blinking hazily, Ralph slowly propped himself up on his elbows and looked around. He was lying on his back on the cement floor, surrounded by a gathering of intrigued-looking bystanders from the party. On his right side, he noticed what looked like the cracked remains of the post and the severed ropes from his corner of the ring, and on his left side . . .

"Mike!" he muttered her name out loud in a knee-jerk response, wincing as he pushed himself up on his hands. Vanellope slid off his chest and hopped down to the floor, her brow suddenly narrowing. Mike, who was kneeling beside him and looking so pale that the number of freckles on her nose and cheeks almost seemed to have multiplied, put one hand on his bare shoulder and tried to make him lay back down.

"D-don't . . . don't move," she urged him, sounding as hollow and shaken as she looked. "F-Felix will be here any second."

Ignoring the gentle push of her hand, Ralph sat up straighter and hunched forward, cringing as a wave of dizziness stung behind his eyes. He held the side of his head with one hand and looked back and forth between Vanellope and Mike. Suddenly, without knowing why, he felt overwhelmingly awkward.

"So . . . uh . . . . I guess this means I lost the fight?"

His statement was answered by a sudden, jeering cackle of laughter sounding from above him. He looked up and saw Johnny Cage standing at his feet, looking sweaty and exhausted, but - apart from a few stray bruises and his right ear, which was swollen into a red, bulbous cauliflower - relatively unhurt.

"You can bet that big _black eye _you lost, Tubs!" Johnny shouted, leaning forward and jabbing one finger tauntingly down at him. "Did I tell you, or did I _tell you? _Nobody messes with the Cage and walks away without getting a grade A _beat_-down!"

"Oh, for the love of . . . would you _shut it _already!?" Vanellope snarled. "Yeah, you won, congratulations! Now run along home and tell your mommy!"

Johnny pointed a sharp glare in her direction, then rolled his eyes dismissively and set his sights on Mike instead.

"Like anyone cares what the president of _candy-land_ has to say," he scoffed. "Come on, Angie . . . whaddaya say you and me get out of here and head to Tapper's for a nice - "

"TAKE A HIKE, SLEAZEBALL!"

Ralph flinched so hard it nearly hurt his swollen eye, he and Vanellope both jerking their heads to look at Mike with matching, open-mouthed expressions. Even Johnny was struck momentarily speechless, blinking with disbelief as Mike glared daggers at him over her shoulder, her teeth clenched and her small chest heaving almost imperceptibly. For a few seconds, everyone stared at her in stunned silence . . . then, she put both hands protectively on Ralph's shoulder and darkened her scowl even further, her voice rising to a pitch of furious contempt that he wouldn't have believed her to be capable of if he wasn't hearing it with own ears.

"Well?" she snapped. "What are you waiting for? I said _BEAT IT!"_

Johnny gaped for another instant, then shook himself and narrowed his eyes in an incredulous glare.

"You . . . you know what? Fine! _Your _loss, chica! You want to spend your time hanging around these losers, _be my guest! _I don't have to stand here and take this! Johnny _out!"_

He flared his nostrils furiously once more at each of them in turn, then spun on his heel and stormed away, shoving his way through the crowd and quickly vanishing from sight. Mike glared scathingly for a moment longer in the direction he had gone, and before either Ralph or Vanellope could find their voices, they heard the unmistakable sound of Zangief urgently making his way toward them through the circle of onlookers.

"One side, people, one side! Emergency first-aid, coming through! Candy girl, Meekelangela . . . Zangief has finally found Fixing Man!"

Still partially reeling from Mike's startling outburst, Ralph blinked and turned to see his Bad-Anon friend pushing through the circle with the neck of Felix's shirt clamped tightly in his right hand, carrying his protagonist along at waist height like a doggy-bag and then dropping him onto the floor beside Vanellope with a short yelp. Felix shook himself and quickly regained his composure, immediately pulling his hammer from its holster and steadying himself with one hand on Ralph's arm.

"Oh, my _land! . . ." _he murmured anxiously, clearly still racing to catch up with the situation as he looked hurriedly over Ralph's various injuries and began addressing his hammer to the worst of them. "Zangief wasn't _kidding . . . . _Ralph, why on earth did you do this? I thought you didn't even want to _be _here, much less get in the ring with a professional fighter!"

Felix gently tapped his face as he spoke, and Ralph exhaled with relief and rolled his jaw as the throbbing pain mercifully vanished. He averted his eyes sheepishly as Felix continued the repairs, the memory of his altercation with Johnny abruptly seeming childish and humiliating now that he was no longer blinded by his temper.

"No, uh . . . no reason," he lied quietly, absently flexing his fingers and testing the bend of his elbow after Felix hammered it. "Just . . . you know, got bored waiting around. So where's Calhoun, anyway?" he cleared his throat, eager to change the subject.

Felix delivered the last tap to a fist-shaped welt on Ralph's chest and stood back, sighing exasperatedly as he holstered his hammer.

"Oh, trust me, she's having the time of her life," he muttered. "When Zangief came to get me, she was on her fifth opponent and still undefeated . . . two more, and they say she's going to break some kind of party record. The fighters from Tekken are taking bets on her."

"Ha! What did I tell you guys? Can I call it, or can I call it?" Vanellope snorted, tapping the back of her hand on Ralph's arm. "Well . . . come on, champ. If you're all better now, we _gotta _go see this."

Ralph hesitated and darted his eyes once quickly toward Mike. He had suddenly become very aware of her hand still squeezing his left shoulder and her eyes pressing anxiously on the side of his face.

"Uh . . . you . . . you guys go ahead. We'll . . . catch up in a second."

Felix nodded his head with an immediate look of understanding . . . but Vanellope blinked in surprise, then darkened into an inexplicable glare. Ralph tried to meet her eyes questioningly, but her gaze seemed to be concentrated on Mike . . . if it weren't for Felix taking her by the arm and gently leading her away, Ralph got the feeling she might have begun about to say something severely unpleasant. Zangief turned to follow them back down the aisle as well, but not before giving Ralph a friendly nudge on the shoulder and an encouraging smile.

"Be not disheartened by defeat, Wrecking Man," he said warmly. "Was really not so terrible, for your first time!"

Ralph tried to smile in return. "Er . . . yeah, thanks." He waited until Zangief had gone, then slumped his shoulders and breathed a long, weary exhale.

The fickly interested crowd around them had been gradually dispersing for several minutes, and now there was no one near them except a few stragglers looking around for the next fight. For a short moment, he and Mike just sat next to each other on the floor at the edge of the damaged ring and stared down at the concrete in marked silence.

When the awkwardness became too palpable to bear any longer, Mike quietly cleared her throat. He turned his eyes toward her, and she held something up to him with both hands.

"Here, ah . . . h-here are your shirts," she muttered absently, looking away.

Ralph froze. His heart abruptly began to pump a flush of colorful heat straight up into his face as he realized that he had been sitting there in front of her for ten minutes, bare-skinned from the waist up. He instantly became painfully conscious of himself, of the exposed bulk of his shoulders and chest, the undeniable protrusion of his large, slightly rounded belly. Swallowing back a dry gulp of embarrassment, he forced himself to take his shirts from her calmly, rather than rip them frantically out of her hands.

"Th . . . thanks."

"You're welcome." If she was at all perturbed or made uneasy by his exposed skin, Mike showed no sign of it . . . in fact, she kept her eyes glued distractedly to the floor while he was clumsily redressing, and didn't look up at him even when he had snapped the strap of his overalls back into place.

"Ralph . . . " she began suddenly, her voice low and stammering as she fiddled awkwardly with the knot in her smock. " . . . about . . . about Johnny, I . . . I didn't . . . I didn't mean to . . . "

She hesitated, then trailed off with a miserable sigh, lowering her chin even further.

Ralph pursed his mouth into a flat line as he watched her, too conflicted to say anything in response. Part of him immediately wanted to comfort her, another part wanted to just stand up and leave her there alone without saying anything . . . . and yet another was still too utterly flabbergasted by the fact that she had actually chosen the split-second before he was obliterated by Johnny's foot to _kiss him _for the first time to know _what _he wanted to do.

After another moment of stilted, pregnant silence, he exhaled softly through his nose and heaved himself to his feet. Mike looked up at him with a helpless twinge of frustration, and he quietly extended his arm to her.

"Come on," he murmured, closing his fingers firmly around her hand as she laid it in his palm. "Let's just find the others."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Locating the ring in which Calhoun was fighting turned out to be an easier task than Ralph had hoped . . . working their way through the densely packed crowd _surrounding _it, however, proved much more difficult. Virtually half the party - including most of the other combatants themselves - had abandoned the other rings and flocked around the platform where Calhoun was now facing off against Blanka . . . even with the advantage of Ralph's size leading the way, it took the two of them several minutes to fight their way up to the side of the ring. Once there, Ralph spotted Felix and Vanellope hanging from the ropes in Calhoun's corner, and motioned with one hand for Mike to follow him over to them.

"Come on, Felix . . . isn't she ready to leave yet?" Ralph grumbled as he drew near to his friends, having to raise his voice to be heard over the hollering of the spectators.

Felix, his eyes glued to the fight, only shook his head wearily as Calhoun ducked to avoid a vicious swipe of Blanka's claws and caught him straight in the gut with a violent forearm-shiv.

"Sorry, Ralph, but I'm afraid she's not going to quit until she loses . . . which means I might be here for a _while _yet_. _You three should just head on home without us."

Vanellope blew an indignant raspberry, and Ralph swore he saw her shoot a flashing, venomous glare in Mike's direction.

"Forget it, Fix-It. No way am I missing _this!" _she quipped defiantly, jerking her thumb toward the ring just as Calhoun balled her fists together and slammed them down between Blanka's shoulder blades, laying him out on the floor and drawing a riotous cheer from the crowd. "Sergeant Psycho's about to break a record!"

"Or Blanka's _neck," _Ralph muttered, wincing as the green-skinned fighter tried to rise to his hands and knees and was promptly flattened again.

"That . . . ha . . . that all you _got_, buddy?" Calhoun crowed, rather good-naturedly. She was sweating and out of breath, but still grinning from ear to ear. "Come on, I know you've got more _spunk _than that. Here, I'll even give you a minute to re . . . recu . . . r-recuper . . . . "

Ralph's eyes widened as he watched Calhoun's confident smile suddenly falter and disappear. She stood up straighter, her arms dropping out of her fighting stance and her face abruptly going pale. When her knees began to shake and she staggered a step backward, he knew beyond a doubt that something was seriously wrong. Ralph shot an urgent look at Felix, and it was clear that he had seen it, too . . . his protagonist was already climbing up over the ropes, his face wrought with alarm.

"Tammy? _Tammy!? _What's wrong?"

Calhoun didn't respond. She was staring unseeingly in front of her with a blank, paralyzed expression, her lips parting and hovering open as if she were trying to speak, but couldn't find her breath. The roar of the crowd began to weaken and quiet as more and more characters noticed the startling development. Then, before Felix could climb into the ring, Blanka was suddenly on his feet again and evidently unaware of what was happening . . . seeing his formidable opponent inexplicably off-guard, he seized the opportunity and lunged.

"NO!" Felix shouted in horror . . . but it was already too late. They could no nothing but watch as Blanka rammed into Calhoun with the full thrust of his weight, shoving her so hard that she flew into the ropes and immediately flipped backward straight over the edge of the ring, the spectators crying out in shock and clumsily managing to catch her in their collective grasp.

Felix was over the ropes and dashing across the ring before Calhoun had even hit the ropes. Ralph and Vanellope exchanged frantic, rapid glances, then took off simultaneously without a word, Mike following close at their heels. By the time the three of them worked their way around to the side of the ring where Calhoun had fallen, the sergeant had already been lain carefully down on the floor with her head and shoulders cradled in Felix's arms, the surrounding characters stepping back and forming a small, anxious circle around them.

"Tammy? Tammy, sweetheart, it's me! Can you hear me?" Felix's voice was hollow and on the verge of panic, his hand shaking as he pushed Calhoun's bangs off of her perspiring forehead. Her face had grown so pale it was almost frightening - her eyes were closed, and her limbs had gone limp. Ralph, Vanellope and Mike stumbled to a horrified halt at the front of the circle, and for thirty slow, terrifying seconds, everything went completely silent.

Then, without warning, Calhoun's eyes abruptly fluttered open and she sucked in a deep breath, jerking and twitching as if waking from a trance. A shade of color flushed back into her face, and they all gasped a collective sigh of relief. Felix pushed his hat off with one hand and hugged his wife gratefully to his chest, his shoulders heaving lightly for a moment as he regained his composure.

"Oh, _Tammy!" _he gasped weakly, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing the side of his face fiercely into the crown of her head. "Oh, honey, don't _do that _to me . . . . "

Calhoun blinked and tried to sit up, looking around with a dazed expression.

"What . . . what just happened?" she muttered, her voice shaky, but slowly regaining its strength.

"You just . . . froze!" Vanellope answered with a baffled stare. "You froze like a popsicle and got pushed out of the ring!"

Calhoun sat up straight and put her hand to her forehead, squinting and looking down.

"Yeah . . . . yeah, I just . . . I don't know what happened. I was just standing there, and all of a sudden, everything went spinning, and . . . I felt so _strange . . ."_

"Do you feel any pain now? Are you hurt anywhere?" Felix demanded, his hand already reaching for his hammer.

"What? No, _no," _Calhoun insisted, shaking her head at him and easing herself out of his grasp. "Felix, stop it, I'm fine . . . . it was just a little dizzy spell. I'm over it already."

She moved to stand up, but Felix stopped her firmly with his hands on her shoulders.

"Sweetheart, _wait. _Let us help you."

"Er . . . yeah. Here," Ralph offered his arm awkwardly - Calhoun made a face, but reluctantly accepted, bracing herself on his hand as Felix helped her up from the other side. She rose somewhat shakily to her feet, sniffing loudly and wiping the sweat from her brow.

"Thanks, worrywarts, but really . . . I'm _fine. _Look, it's already - "

She took a step forward, and her knee abruptly buckled. Ralph jumped and shot his arm out, catching her before she fell. Felix breathed a tense, nervous exhale, and Calhoun's face went a slight shade pinker as she straightened up. She was silent for a few seconds, then grudgingly encircled Ralph's arm with her hands, lowered her chin so that her bangs hid her eyes from view, and muttered darkly under her breath.

"Let's just get the bits out of here."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph breathed a small sigh of relief twenty minutes later as the five of them finally passed through the gate of Street Fighter II and found themselves standing once more in the bright, open air of Game Central Station. It was long past midnight, and even though the bustling traffic of the transit area had calmed down considerably from what it had been when they first entered the game, the overall festive tone of the arcade that night was still evident in the chattering atmosphere of the station.

Calhoun, visibly mortified at having had to be helped out of the game, let go of Ralph's arm and tried to walk on her own again as soon as they were through the gate . . . but Felix stopped her with an authoritative look before she had taken two wobbly steps.

_"Sugarfoot . . ." _he said in a low, warning tone, sliding her cruiser off of his shoulder and unfolding it in front of them. " . . . you're taking it _easy, _remember?"

Calhoun huffed and blew a strand of hair from her forehead, but grudgingly allowed herself to be helped onto the hovering platform, where she sat down cross-legged in front of Felix and exasperatedly shoved her chin into her palm.

"Couple of a regular _nanny-_goats, you guys are," she grumbled. "How many times do I have to tell you, I'm _fine."_

"Of course you are, honeycomb," Felix clucked, then shot an apologetic glance at Ralph and the girls. "Sorry to have to end our outing on such a sour note, you three . . . but for the most part, I'd say it was a hoot and a half! And I'm sure honored to have been a part of your inaugural trip around the arcade, Mike." He tipped his cap to her, and for the first time since Ralph's fight with Johnny, Mike tilted her mouth into a small, reluctant smile.

"It was wonderful to meet you, Felix . . . Calhoun," she added warmly, turning an affectionate glance toward each of them in turn. Calhoun gave only a half-hearted wave and an indeterminate grunt in reply, and Felix patted his wife comfortingly on the shoulder.

"We'd better get going . . . goodnight, gang. See you tomorrow, Ralph."

With a final nod of farewell, the worn-out-looking handyman tapped the heel of his boot on the cruiser's accelerator and the jets flared quietly to life, propelling the hover-board away at a gentle speed toward the other side of the terminal. Ralph, Vanellope, and Mike watched the Fix-Its zoom away in thoughtful silence until they had vanished from sight inside the gate of Hero's Duty . . . . then, they turned to face each other, and Ralph was again struck with a sudden sense of overwhelming awkwardness he couldn't quite explain to himself. He noticed, with slight perturbation, that Mike and Vanellope were pointedly avoiding looking at each other, and it gave him the uneasy feeling that he had missed something. After a few seconds passed and it became clear that neither of them wanted to speak first, he cleared his throat uncertainly and looked down at the space between his feet.

"Sssoooo . . . I, ah . . . I guess we may as well call it a night too, huh?"

Mike and Vanellope nodded simultaneously, their faces still pointed stubbornly away from one another . . . then, as if an enterprising thought had suddenly occurred to her, Mike's downhearted expression suddenly brightened, and she turned to look at him eagerly.

"Yes, but . . . would you like to walk me home, first?"

Ralph started slightly in surprise at her sudden change in demeanor . . . he was still feeling somewhat hurt and conflicted towards her, but it was nevertheless comforting to hear the familiar sweetness and optimism returning to her voice. Before he could answer her in the affirmative, however, Vanellope suddenly jerked to attention and spoke up as well.

"BUT . . . . Ralph has to be careful not to stay up _too late, _because tomorrow is Sunday, and that means that he has to be in Sugar Rush bright and early to meet _me_ for our regular Sunday out . . . _right, _Ralph?"

Ralph blinked. The enthusiasm in her tone was almost jarring, and she was looking up at him with a wide-eyed, uncharacteristically doting smile that made him reflexively raise one eyebrow.

"Well . . . yeah, sure . . . I guess. You really still want to go out tomorrow, after everything that happened to_night? _Wouldn't you rather just take a day to relax, and - "

"What? _No! _Ralph, we haven't missed a Sunday out all _year, _we're not starting now! Promise me you'll be in Sugar Rush _first thing _tomorrow morning!"

"Okay, okay, I _promise!" _Ralph muttered hastily, holding his hands up. "Cross my heart, kiddo . . . _first _thing tomorrow morning."

This seemed to satisfy her, and Vanellope flattened her mouth into a firm line and nodded.

_"Good." _She cast a narrow, sidelong glance at Mike, then stuffed her hands into her pockets and turned away. "Well, alright then . . . it's been a scream, chuckleheads, but this President needs her beauty rest. Sayonara."

"Hey . . . don't you want us to walk you back to your gate?" Ralph called after her . . . but she simply blew a short raspberry and kept walking.

"Yeah . . . thanks, but no thanks," she tossed cavalierly over her shoulder. "Some of us are capable of making it home _without _an escort. See you tomorrow, Stinkbrain!"

And with that, she strode away across the station and didn't look back. Ralph shook his head perplexedly as he watched her go, wondering what it could be that had her so miffed all of a sudden . . . but before he could give it much thought, he felt Mike's hand curling around his arm and turned to look at her. In spite of everything, he couldn't help but quirk one corner of his mouth in a warm smile as she shyly linked both of her arms around his.

"Well . . . you ready to head home then, little miss heavyweight?" he joked, turning in the direction of the Masterwork gate . . . to his surprise, however, she pulled him back and pinned him with a soft, earnest look.

"Ralph, _wait_ . . . I . . . I was actually just wondering, if . . . before you take me home, if we . . . if we could go to Fix-It Felix, Jr., first."

He started, and a tint of color began to creep suddenly back into his cheeks.

"It's . . . getting kind of _late, _isn't it?" he heard himself stammer. "Aren't you . . . tired?"

She shook her head firmly. "Only a little . . . and the arcade is closed tomorrow anyway, isn't it? Please, Ralph . . . I really am _dying _to see your game. Couldn't we please go and visit it . . . just quickly, for a little while?"

Ralph swallowed, his throat feeling abruptly dry. Something about the way she was looking at him and the soft, hopeful tone of her voice . . . . he couldn't have said no, even if he'd wanted to.

"Ah . . . s-sure. We can . . . we can go to my game, for a while . . . if that's really what you want?"

Her smile softened with what looked fleetingly like a hint of melancholy, and she nodded as she stroked her fingers almost imperceptibly on the skin of his forearm.

"It's what I really want, Ralph," she said quietly. "Thank you."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As the rickety blue train rattled its way down the tracks and through the brick tunnel that opened into Fix-It Felix Jr., Ralph braced himself expectantly for another awestruck display of emotion from Mike, the way she had reacted to her first glimpses of both Sugar Rush and Street Fighter . . . . but to his sharp astonishment, she did no such thing. She remained completely calm and silent in the car in front of him, simply turning her gaze quietly around at the night-time world of his game as the train came to cheerful halt at the station.

Thoroughly perplexed, Ralph squeezed himself out of the last car and lurched onto the station platform. His confusion doubled when he looked down and saw that the only expression visible on Mike's face was a quiet, almost resigned look of what could only truly be described as sadness.

" . . . Mike?" he asked softly, a knot of concern starting to tighten in his chest. "Is . . . something wrong?"

She shook her head wistfully, a faint smile turning on her mouth even as the sadness in her eyes intensified. She trolled her gaze slowly around the Fix-It Felix Jr. landscape, and her chest rose and fell with an unreadable sigh.

"It's wonderful, Ralph," she said quietly, standing up and letting him help her onto the platform. "You know . . . it's almost just the way I pictured it."

He tried to sound cheerful, but found it difficult, as his thoughts were growing more bewildered and conflicted by the minute.

"Well . . . it's not much, but it's home."

She nodded, and turned to him with a brave smile that was clearly masking something else she didn't want him to see.

"It's beautiful. I knew it would be. Would . . . would you show me where you live?"

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The air in Fix-It Felix Jr. was clearer and slightly chillier than the atmosphere of Game Central Station, and Mike found herself absently rubbing her hands over her bare arms as she followed Ralph along the path that ran from the quaint little train station, over the grassy hills and towards the tall brick building, the single prominent feature of the game's miniature landscape.

She had meant what she said. Ralph's game truly was beautiful . . . . in it's way, it was perhaps even more beautiful than any of the other places she had seen that night. The worlds of Sugar Rush and Street Fighter had been stunning, almost overwhelming with their size and complexity and mesmerizing levels of detail . . . but the more she looked around her at the simple, dark surroundings of Fix-It Felix Jr. - at the soft, clear tones of the grass and the trees, the warm black ceiling of the night sky with its sparse, twinkling stars - the more she realized that Ralph's game had something special, some unique that the others didn't. It had _quiet. _It had closeness, and clarity, and a sense of homey peacefulness that the other games, for all their dazzle and glamour, distinctly lacked.

Then, as she was walking quietly behind him along the trail, Mike was suddenly struck by the additional realization that beyond these things, the reason Ralph's game was so different from the others - the reason she found it so inexplicably appealing - was because the game almost seemed like an extension of Ralph himself. It was undeniably as much a part of him as he was of it . . . and being inside of it was almost like looking into a secret, inner chamber of his heart and his past, a place where she could see a side to him that she had never seen before.

Here in this small, quiet world of his, she suddenly understood . . . _truly _understood, even more so than when she had been watching him fight against Johnny . . . . that Ralph could be vulnerable_._

They had almost reached the brick building when Ralph turned unexpectedly to the left and led her underneath a brick archway emblazoned with the words "East Niceland." Mike's eyes widened slightly with astonishment when she realized that the towering, dark mass looming up ahead of them was a small mountain comprised entirely of bricks . . . they walked until they were at the foot of the pile, and Ralph came to an abrupt stop, so abrupt that she nearly bumped into him. Mike lowered her gaze from the distant peak of the brick mountain and looked down at the spot toward which he was gesturing.

"Well . . . . there she is," he muttered. "Home, sweet home."

Mike blinked.

It took her a few seconds to truly register that the tiny, roughly cobbled brick cottage sitting in front of her was the place where Ralph actually lived . . . but when she did, the feelings that had been gradually welling up inside of her for the past hour - along with conflicting twinges of a new emotion - suddenly became too much to keep inside, and she had to dash the back of her hand across her eyes before Ralph could notice the unbidden tears that had sprung up in their corners. She cleared her throat lightly, struggling to keep her voice from wavering.

"It's . . . . it's, ah . . . . "

"Small, I know," Ralph finished for her sheepishly. "Did my best on it . . . won't win any beauty contests, but . . . suits me well enough."

Mike blinked again, this time in an attempt to wick away fresh tears before they could surface.

"You built this yourself?"

He nodded and looked away, absently scratching the back of his neck. "Heh, sure did . . . which is why it looks so . . . you know . . . "

"Can I see inside?"

He paused, and Mike thought she heard him give a heavy swallow before nodding and lumbering past her with a nonchalant shrug.

"S-sure . . . why not."

He opened the small front door of the cottage and held it open for her, and she found herself holding her breath as she crept forward over the threshold with mixed feelings of eagerness and timidity.

The inside of the house was too dim and shadowy to make out, and when Ralph stepped in behind her and closed the door, everything was swallowed up in near total blackness. Her heart began to pound as she heard him shuffling around her in the dark, and all of a sudden there was a faint _click _and the house was flooded with a soft, golden light emanating from the room's single lamp, hanging over the room's single table.

Mike looked slowly around the room, taking in the entirety of its size and simplicity within seconds. She wasn't sure if Ralph's cottage was the single most charming place she had ever seen, or . . . for some reason . . . the most heartbreaking. She was immediately transported back to the night they'd first met, when he first told her that in his game, he was the _bad guy. _Even after he had tried to explain it to her, she hadn't fully understood what those words meant. . . . . and then, earlier that night, when Johnny had used the name repeatedly as an insult . . . .

Only now, as she looked around her at the humble little shack that Ralph had reportedly built himself, did she slowly begin to form a complete picture of what the words really meant . . . . and why her silence that night had hurt him so. Standing there, with the roughness of the unfinished floorboards beneath her feet and the hulking figure of her friend . . . her first, her only _true_ friend . . . silhouetted in the soft light, almost having to hunch slightly to stand up beneath his own ceiling . . . did she begin to comprehend just how little she had really understood about him until that moment.

She turned to look at him. He smiled meekly at her and held his arms up, gesturing to the small room.

"Well, this is it. What do you think?"

Mike blinked, opened her mouth, and burst into tears.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph went rigid as a post and bugged his eyes wide with horror as Mike covered her face with her hands and began crying openly, her shoulders shaking as she muffled tiny gasps and silent sobs into her palms.

For a few seconds, he just stood there rooted speechlessly to the floor and watched her . . . then, as soon as he was able to will movement back into his shocked limbs, he hastily darted forward and hovered his hands anxiously around her shoulders for a moment, not knowing whether he should touch her or not.

"W-wha . . . what? What's wrong?" he stammered helplessly. Mike shook her head and buried her face deeper in her hands, her shoulders jerking even harder. Ralph swallowed down a rising wave of panic and forced himself to wrap one hand around her back, propelling her gently across the room toward his bed.

"Here, just . . . s-sit down," he eased her onto the edge of the bed, and she obediently sat down without looking at him. He swallowed again, his heart throbbing anxiously as his brain raced to try and understand what could have possibly gone so wrong so quickly. "Mike, _please . . . _t-try to calm down!"

She took a few deep, gasping breaths, rubbing the heels of her hands over her streaming eyes and abruptly sitting up straighter. She lowered her hands to her lap and sniffed sharply, trying to compose herself. Ralph couldn't decide whether the miserable look on her face was wrought more heavily with guilt, or embarrassment.

"I'm sorry," she blurted breathlessly. "I'm sorry, I'm s-s . . . _s-so _sorry . . . "

"What? No, no, don't be!" he pleaded, dropping onto one knee in front of the bed so that their faces were level. "It's . . . it's okay to cry."

She shook her head violently, tightening her hands into fists against her thighs and squeezing her eyes shut.

"N-no, it's not that. I'm s-sorry about . . . about what happened at the party. I'm sorry I didn't st-stand up for you, I . . . I'm sorry I let him say those awful things to you, I'm sorry you got _hurt . . . _I'm sorry I k-kissed you, and made you lose the _fight . . . "_

She was muttering everything in one breathless, continual stream, but the moment he heard the word _kiss _escape her lips, Ralph's face flushed brightly and he hastily held up his hand to stop her, clamping his thumb over her mouth and cutting her off in mid-sentence.

"Whoa, _whoa, _just . . . just slow down!" he cried, desperately hoping that the light in the room was too dim for her to make out the hot color blazing in his cheeks. "It's . . . it's okay, Mike."

She hiccupped sharply beneath his thumb, then shook her head again and pulled back so she could speak.

_"No, _it's not. I . . . I never should have let him talk that way to you. I d-don't . . . I don't know _why _I did, I . . . some part of me was just . . . I don't know, _angry _with you, and . . . and some part of me _wanted _you to b-be . . . j-_jealous, _and_ . . . _and . . . I _don't know . . ." _she degenerated into quiet sobbing again and slumped forward, covering her eyes with her hand.

For another moment, Ralph just kneeled there silently and watched her. His heart was still wrenching with each small sound she made as she was crying, but even as it did, he was slowly being filled up with a swell of relief and happiness so strong that within less than half a minute, he was unable to stop himself . . . while she was still in the throes of her tears, he wrapped both arms around her and pulled her against his chest, hugging her tightly over his heart without speaking.

Mike immediately stopped crying and went stiff with shock . . . then, gradually, her body softened and yielded into him, and after a few seconds she had slipped both arms up around his neck and was squeezing him back so fiercely it almost left him short of breath.

For one surreal, dizzying moment that might have lasted one minute or ten, they sat there in complete silence and simply held each other. Ralph squeezed his eyes shut and let himself turn his face just briefly into her hair, pressing her closer against his chest as she twitched and hiccupped with one last lingering sob.

"It's okay," he repeated gently, lifting one hand and cupping it around the back of her head. "It's okay. I forgive you."

She sniffed loudly and buried her face in his neck, the wetness of her tears smearing off on his skin. Finally, almost reluctantly, he loosened his hold on her and leaned away, letting her ease back down to sit on the edge of the bed. She sniffed again and wiped her hand once more across her nose and eyes, letting out a weak, shaky laugh as she lifted her face to look him in the eye. Finding himself for once unhindered by even the slightest twinge of shyness or embarrassment, he smiled back at her and lifted his hand to hold the side of her face, running his thumb beneath her eye and wiping away the last shining trace of moisture.

"By the way . . ." he joked quietly, chuckling deep in his throat. " . . . you snort a lot when you cry."

She laughed out loud, and a few more tears worked their way out of her eyes.

"You know what I like about you, Ralph?" she asked, giggling shakily and sniffing to catch her breath. "You make me laugh."

"Really? I thought you only liked me for my hands."

She shut her eyes and giggled again, playfully pushing his hand away from the side of her face.

"Oh, that's right. I forgot."

Ralph grinned, then paused for a moment and blinked at her with a pleasant jolt of surprise.

"Mike . . . I think that might be the first time I've ever heard you use _sarcasm."_

She looked up at him and smiled, hunching her neck shyly into her shoulders. He chuckled as he pushed himself off his knee and carefully sat down next to her on the edge of the bed, the mattress bowing under his weight and making her slide a few inches closer to him.

"I guess visiting the other games really did help with that learning curve of yours," he thought aloud.

Mike nodded acquiescingly . . . then paused, her smile suddenly falling and her eyes turning toward the floor.

Ralph's own smile faltered as he watched her. "Was . . . was it something I said?"

She shook her head quietly and lifted her hands to the back of her head, absently working her fingers in the messy knot until her hair came loose again and fell down in its usual tangled mane around her shoulders.

"No, it's . . . it's just . . . there _is_ something I learned tonight . . . but not well enough. Something I want to know more about."

She turned to look at him, and her face was abruptly sad and serious.

"Ralph . . . " she quietly, her eyes staring directly into his. " . . . tell me about your life, before I came to the arcade. Tell me about this house. Tell me . . . tell me more about . . . what it means to be a _bad guy._"

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

After what felt like a small eternity of sitting and listening to himself talk, Ralph paused between sentences to steady himself with a deep, slow breath, his shoulders slumped and eyes fixed unseeingly ahead of him on the other side of the room. Mike was leaning against his side in the same position she had held for the past hour, listening to every word he said in rapt silence. In her hands was the medal given to him by Vanellope, which he had lifted from its hook on the wall and handed to her when he came to that juncture of his narrative, and which she had been quietly studying and turning over gently in her fingers ever since.

" . . . . and then . . . . well . . . . after the whole mess got sorted out, I guess everything just kind of fell into place on its own, for a while," he concluded with a small sigh, running one hand tiredly through his hair. "Vanellope and I saw each other every day, for weeks after that. It was such a change, such an incredible _change . . . _not feeling like an outsider in my own game, not being all alone anymore . . . to have a real friend, real _friends_. I was so grateful, and it was all so _new . . . . _for a long time after that, I was sure I had everything I could ever need . . . everything I could ever _want. _But then . . . then . . . Mike?"

He felt her suddenly slump further against his side, and turned to look at her. As soon as he said her name, she jerked and sat up straighter, blinking and closing her fingers protectively around the cookie medal. In spite of himself, Ralph couldn't help but smile at her visible attempts to conceal how tired she really was. She ran her fingers once more over the little words iced across the medal, then carefully handed it back to him and shook her head wistfully.

"No wonder," she muttered almost inaudibly under her breath. "No wonder she was so angry with me . . . "

Ralph's ears perked up. "Huh? What did you say?"

Mike's eyes widened, as if she hadn't realized she'd been speaking out loud. "Oh . . . n-nothing. Just . . . . I . . . I can't believe how much I didn't know . . . . how much you've been through. I wish . . . I just wish I could have . . . could have been . . . "

Her head began to nod, and it was clear that she was about to fall asleep sitting up at any moment. Ralph smiled again. The effort of telling her essentially his entire life story in just over an hour had taken a greater emotional toll on him than he expected, resurrected old thoughts and feelings that he hadn't confronted for a long time . . . he was almost grateful that they didn't have to exchange any more words about it that night, that they could trail off in silence and simply let things be until another day.

Abruptly overcome with weariness himself, Ralph gave a wide yawn as he propped Mike up with one hand and then stood up from the bed, lowering her gently down to her side on the mattress. The instant her head touched the pillow, she snuggled down and curled her legs up to her chest, muttering something indistinguishable beneath her breath. Ralph pulled the blankets up over her and tucked her in as gracefully as possible, then stretched his arms above his head and gave another trembling yawn. His eyelids beginning to lilt heavily, he turned off the light above the table, then sat down on the floor at the edge of the bed and leaned back against the wall, his shoulders slumping and his arms falling limply at his sides.

A few short seconds later, he had almost drifted off to sleep already when Mike's voice muttering beside him suddenly made him stir, his eyes blinking and tilting wearily to peer at her through the darkness.

"Hmm?" he mumbled, almost too tired to know whether he had really heard her or not.

Her eyes closed and her expression peaceful, Mike nestled herself closer to the edge of the bed, her hair fanning out behind her across his pillow.

" . . . I wish . . . I could have been there for you . . . those years that you were alone," she muttered, so softly and blankly that he wondered if she wasn't talking in her sleep. " The way you . . . were there for me, when I . . . was alone . . . the way I wish . . . I'd been there for you . . . tonight."

Ralph blinked sleepily, her words only half registering with a soft flutter of warmth deep inside of him . . . . when suddenly, like the last lightning bolt of a fading storm, an idea flashed brilliantly in his dwindling consciousness and jerked him wide awake again for a few precious seconds. Momentarily energized by the gleam of opportunity, Ralph sat up straighter and put his face close to Mike's, his eyes wide and his pulse pounding.

_She was half asleep, but still talking . . . . this was his chance to ask her the question he had wanted to ask since the moment it occurred, but had been too shy and nervous to ask while she was awake, while she was looking at him with those piercing green eyes . . . but now . . ._

"Mike," he said firmly, fighting to keep his voice steady as his heart leapt into his mouth. "Mike . . . can I ask you something?"

"Mmm-hmmm."

He swallowed, and his throat was cotton-dry.

"Why did you k . . . k . . . _kiss_ me?"

She curled up tighter into his pillow, and one corner of her mouth turned up in an unconscious smile.

"Because . . . . I wanted . . . . to. Ever since . . . I saw Calhoun . . . and Felix . . . doing it . . . I wanted to . . . . "

Ralph blinked. He suddenly felt as if his insides had become weightless, and he were hovering inches above the floor. He swallowed again.

"But why . . . . why _then?_ Why do it while I was still fighting?"

Mike's smile straightened, her brow furrowing slightly over her closed eyes.

"Because . . . I wanted . . . to prove her wrong. Guess . . . it didn't . . . really work . . . "

Ralph narrowed his eyes confusedly.

"What? Prove who wrong?"

But it was too late . . . Mike had finally slipped through the last veil of consciousness and was completely asleep, her lips parting silently and her face blanking of all expression. Ralph let his eyes linger for a moment longer on her still, shallowly breathing form . . . then he fell back against the wall and stared off into space, his brief flare of wakefulness fading as quickly as it came and exhaustion overtaking him once more. He closed his eyes, and fell instantly asleep.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It felt like only seconds, but was in reality several hours later, when Mike found herself abruptly awake again. She blinked blearily for a few seconds, then slowly lifted her head from the pillow and looked around her at the dark interior of the strange room. For a brief moment, she couldn't remember where she was, or how she had gotten there . . . then, the stillness of the atmosphere was broken by a loud, grating noise, and she realized immediately what it was and why it had awoken her.

Ralph was snoring. He was sitting on the floor directly beside the bed, slumped with his back to the wall and one arm resting on the edge of the mattress, his head propped in his hand. His face was peacefully blank, and every few seconds he breathed a sharp inhale and resonated the air around her with a deep, rumbling snore.

Despite the sleepiness weighing down heavily behind her eyes, Mike's face quirked in an affectionate smile. It wasn't until her knees had dropped onto the wooden floorboards with a soft _clunk _that she realized she had groggily thrown the blankets off and climbed out of the bed to sit down beside him . . . but once she did, she kneeled there for a moment and simply watched him, her heart thrilling with a half-conscious flutter of warmth at the proximity of his bulk and the sweet, unassuming stillness of his face.

She shifted to make herself more comfortable on the hard floor, and as she did one of her hands slid a few inches underneath the bed and came into contact with something startlingly bulging and soft. Curiously, Mike tugged at the invisible object with both hands until it finally slid out into her lap in its sprawling entirety . . . it took her several minutes of squinting and turning the blanket-like thing over and over in her hands before she realized that it was a garment of some kind, an enormous knitted shirt that could obviously belong to no one besides Ralph. Her smile widening, Mike lifted the sweater to her face and inhaled deeply, familiar traces of Ralph's pungent, comforting smell filling her with an almost tangible shudder of warmth.

Without even stopping to think, she searched until she found the correct opening of the sweater and burrowed inside of it, pushing her head up through the neck-hole and working patiently with her hands until she found the end of the sleeves. The garment bunched and draped around her like a tent, and inside it she felt warmer and safer than she ever had . . . until the next moment, when she pulled herself into Ralph's lap and snuggled down over his chest.

The rhythmic drone of Ralph's snoring became a deep, comforting rumble that seemed to vibrate through her whole body as she laid her head down in the small valley where his muscular chest met the round rise of his stomach, and she sighed comfortably as she curled up closer in the warm protection of his largeness. His belly was rising and falling gently beneath her, and she unconsciously rested her hand over it as she was lifted and lowered along with each breath.

She thought . . . she was too sleepy to be sure, but she _thought _. . . that she felt his arm pull down slightly from the edge of the bed to hold her closer. She smiled to herself, and drifted back to sleep with the sound of his heart beating warmly beside her.

**A/N: **I missed writing fluffy scenes like these. Illustration for this chapter is posted on my dA :)


	32. Chapter 31: The Tunnel on the Right

**A/N: **Happy Holy Week, everyone! Jesus is risen, amen, alleluia! Hope you enjoy the chapter :)

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 31: The Tunnel on the Right_

"Mmm . . . _hmmba . . . _hbnn . . . "

Mike's eyes opened. The blanket of sleep slipped abruptly off of her and all at once she was awake, and conscious that Ralph was saying something. She had no idea how many hours it had been since she'd laid down with him on the floor, but judging by the thickness of the haze still clouding her mind, a full night's rest had not yet elapsed. Struggling to gather her groggy thoughts into coherence, she slowly lifted her head off of Ralph's chest and squinted up at him through the darkness.

He was still asleep . . . his head was hanging down limply on his chest, his eyes tightly closed and his breathing still deep and rhythmic . . . . but he was muttering something, indiscernible at first but slowly growing louder and clearer as she sat up straighter and strained her ears to listen.

"Mmm . . . _mbad . . . _an hat's . . . _good . . . "_

Mike narrowed her eyes curiously, leaning closer to him and studying his face. It was almost too dim for her to make out, but she thought she saw his brow slowly furrowing and a look of muted distress creeping over his features.

"Hhuy will _nnuvver_ be good . . . an . . . that's . . . not _bad . . ._"

He paused, and Mike lifted her hand and gently brushed her fingers on the side of his face.

"Ralph?" she said softly, her voice hoarse and throaty from sleep. "Are you awake?"

His pained, unconscious expression only deepened, and she felt a twinge of concern as his voice came out louder and more frantic than before.

"There's _no one _I'd rather _be . . . than me . . . "_

"Ralph!" she said out loud, cupping his cheeks with both hands and giving him a gentle, worried shake. "Ralph, _wake up! _It's just a dream!"

_"NO one I'd rather BE . . . !"_

"RALPH!"

She shook him again, and at last his head gave a startled jerk and his eyes fluttered open, his face going blank as a faint shudder rippled through him. Mike breathed a small sigh and let herself sink back into his lap, but kept her hands cupped protectively around his face.

"It was a _dream, _Ralph," she assured him softly, trying to meet his eyes with hers as his lids hovered half-open. "You were talking in your sleep. It's alright now."

He blinked, his body still limp and his expression empty. When he spoke, she couldn't tell if he was actually awake, or if he was only talking to her through a thin a veil of pseudo-consciousness.

" . . . was just. . . . a dream."

She nodded. "What was it about?"

"About . . . . falling."

"Falling?"

"Falling . . . mountain. Cybugs, had to . . . beacon."

Mike started, her heart stirring inside her with a pulse of recollection from his story a few hours previous. Her face fell, curiosity abruptly replaced with somber understanding.

_"Oh."_

She let her hands fall from his face, and looked down unseeingly into the fabric of his shirt. There was a short moment of silence, and when she spoke again, she found herself faltering strangely over the words.

"What . . . what was that you were saying, Ralph?"

"Hhn?" he grunted, his eyelids drooping heavily. She leaned closer and put her hand on his chest.

"Those words . . . I'm . . . _I'm bad, and that's good . . . ?"_

"Hh . . . huy will . . . never be good . . ."

She pursed her lips. "Right. What is that?"

"Hit's . . . nnm . . . mbad guy . . . Bad Guy Aff'rmurtion."

She squinted, trying to be certain she'd heard him correctly. "Bad Guy . . . _Affirmation?"_

He gave a half-conscious, half-hearted nod, his head lolling sleepily onto his shoulder.

"Mm-hmmm . . . . s'spose to say it when . . . hn need . . . confid'nce. Hr'minds me who . . . who . . . "

His voice began to trail off back into sleep, and she pressed both hands on his chest and gave him one last anxious nudge.

"Reminds you of what? Reminds you of _what, _Ralph?"

"R'minds me . . . who . . . I am."

His mouth stretched open in a slow, cavernous yawn, and with one last shallow exhale, his chin fell back onto his breast, and he was sound asleep.

Mike watched him silently for another moment, her heart pounding as his words resonated thoughtfully around and around in her mind. She slowly eased herself back down in his lap and let her head fall gently onto his stomach again, but her eyes remained opened and staring into the dimness of the room for a while longer before she too drifted back to a restless, contemplative sleep.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Sitting inconspicuously on the nightstand beside her bed, the larger of the two peppermint-striped hands of her hard-candy alarm clock inched over the number 12 with a soft, chirping _tick._

_BBBRRRIIINGG! BBBRRRIIINGG! BBBRRRRII - _

Vanellope quickly finished stuffing her arms into the sleeves of her hoodie, then darted across the room and slammed her fist down on the rattling clock with a satisfying _CLUNK, _the alarm immediately silencing and returning her bedroom to its early morning tranquility.

_6 o'clock, Sunday morning . . . _but Vanellope had been up and about for twenty minutes already, having awoken on her own a short while ahead of the alarm and finding herself instantly too alert and excited to go back to sleep. With a short, muffled giggle of anticipation, she snatched a fresh licorice hair ribbon from the cup on her nightstand, gathering her messy hair up into its usual ponytail as she skipped out of her presidential bedchambers and made her way down the hall. No one else in the castlewas awake yet, and the sound of her prancing footsteps echoed in the empty corridors.

Normally, she and Ralph wouldn't meet at the summit of the Rainbow Bridge for their ritual day out until at least nine or ten in the morning - Ralph stubbornly insisted that he have at least _one _day of the week on which he could sleep in for a couple hours - but today, she was simply too excited to wait. She would sneak over to Fix-It Felix Jr. early and surprise him.

Scarcely fifteen minutes later, she was revving the engine of her candy-kart and pressing her foot down on the gas pedal for one last burst of speed as she came bucking and roaring out of the brick tunnel and into the peaceful stillness of Ralph's game. What with Fix-It Felix Jr. being programmed in a state of perpetual nighttime, Vanellope always found it a little bit disorienting going there in the morning hours . . . . but this time, she barely noticed the jarring change as she swerved her kart off of the tracks just in time to avoid hitting the stationary train and hurtled across the grassy hills, slamming her foot on the brakes and skidding to stop just outside the East Niceland gate.

Her face plastered with an eager grin, Vanellope yanked off her racing goggles and tossed them on the seat of her kart as she climbed out and hurried toward Ralph's house at a near run. She wasn't entirely sure why ( or at least, she didn't stop to consider it too thoroughly ) but she couldn't remember the last time she'd been looking forward to a Sunday alone with her best friend so much.

Giggling to herself with anticipation at the look that would be on Ralph's face when she showed up early and roused him from what was probably a sound, snoring sleep, Vanellope leapt up onto the front stoop of his cottage and slowly, sneakily closed her hand around the doorknob, taking great care not to rattle it and make any noise . . . . but, to her genuine surprise, she discovered that it was locked. Vanellope's face fell, and she let out her baited breath in a frustrated sigh, blowing the bangs out of her forehead and once more cursing the fact that she could only make use of her glitch powers within the confines of Sugar Rush.

_Well, there's __**that **__bit of fun ruined. Oh, well . . ._

Shaking off her disappointment with a light shrug, Vanellope raised her fist and pounded heavily on Ralph's door five times.

BUNK, BUNK, BUNK, BUNK, BUNK.

Then she took a small step back and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Raising one eyebrow impatiently, she reached out and pounded again, this time knocking so hard that her small knuckles twinged a bit and the door shuddered ever so slightly.

_BUNK BUNK BUNK BUNK BUNK!_

"Ralphie?" she called, raising her voice loudly enough to penetrate through the closed door. "You in there? Come on, Rip Van Wreck-It, time to wake up!"

She waited. When another full minute passed and there was no response, Vanellope rolled her eyes and slumped her shoulders exasperatedly.

_Big lummox . . . . probably snoring so loud he can't even hear me . . . ._

Grumbling quietly to herself, Vanellope hopped off the stoop and trudged a few steps through the grass over to the window on the front wall of the house. It was just slightly too high for her to see through the glass standing on her tiptoes, but by grabbing the window sill and pulling herself up to rest on her elbows, she could manage. Vanellope heaved her upper body onto the sill with a tiny grunt, rubbed a small spot on the pane clean with the cuff of her sleeve, and then peered eagerly inside.

"Ralph?"

At first, it was too dark for her to make out anything inside the house. She repositioned herself on the sill and cupped one hand over the side of her eyes, blocking out the faint glare of the morning sunlight beaming through the Fix-It Felix Jr. game screen. She squinted sharply, and after a few seconds her vision adjusted and she could make out the dim shapes inside Ralph's one-roomed shack . . . . the lamp, the table, the set of chairs, the second window on the opposite wall, the large square of his bed crammed into the far corner . . . . and there, sitting just beside it with his back slumped against the wall, Ralph himself.

As soon as she spotted him, Vanellope narrowed her eyes in confusion. He was obviously still asleep . . . but why was he lying on the floor like that, instead of in his bed? She lowered her hand and tapped one finger loudly on the window pane.

_"Ralph!" _she shouted, her breath briefly fogging up the glass in front of her face. "Wake UP already! Rise and shine, Stinkbrain . . . it's _me, _your best - "

All of a sudden, something moved in the darkness, and Vanellope stopped in mid sentence.

It wasn't a sharp movement . . . just a barely noticeable shift in the shadows . . . but it was enough to make her abruptly realize that what she'd thought was just a lumpy blanket lying over Ralph's lap was not a blanket at all, but a person. The figure rolled over to face the window and snuggled down closer over Ralph's chest, and immediately after that, Vanellope realized who it was . . . . and just what it was she was _wearing_.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph's eyes opened a tiny fraction and peered straight ahead of him into the dimness of the room.

He wasn't sure if he had actually heard it, or if it had only been the lingering fragment of a dream . . . but he thought that he had just been awoken by a strange, faint string of noises from somewhere nearby, but separated from him . . . . like a voice, talking to him from the other side of a wall . . . and then, after a short pause, a muted rumbling sound that roared to life for only a few seconds before fading away into the distance.

Blinking as the mantle of sleep gradually gave way to a sharper and sharper level of conscious, Ralph turned his head and groggily scanned around the room . . . . but saw nothing. Everything was still as dark and silent as it had been hours before.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Vanellope slammed her foot down on the gas pedal with such force that the back wheels of her kart spun out against the grass, sending up a spray of dirt and shredding a small patch of turf before she sped away from East Niceland and went racing back to the train station as fast as her machine would take her. She drove through the Fix-It Felix exit, the deserted Game Central Station, and her own game gate practically without seeing them, and it wasn't until she was rapidly approaching the bright light at the end of the Sugar Rush tunnel that she finally applied her foot to the brakes, coming to a screeching halt just inside the game, at the highest peak of the Rainbow Bridge.

Even after her kart came to a stop, Vanellope didn't turn off the engine. Her elbows were locked and her hands were gripping the sides of the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were white. For one long, tense moment, she just sat there huddled in the drivers' pit and stared down at the wheel, the kart rumbling and puttering idly around her.

Finally, after more than a full minute had passed and her heart still hadn't stopped pounding angrily against the wall of her chest, Vanellope slowly let go of the wheel with one hand and shut off the engine. The kart gave a final _pop _and then settled into agreeable silence, and for the first time since stopping she lifted her head to look up at the vast sprawl of the Sugar Rush landscape . . . . but when she did, she discovered that all she could see was a blurry expanse of shapeless color, because her eyes were suddenly brimming over with tears.

All at once, the reeling anger that had been slowly building up inside of her became too much to keep inside. Gritting her teeth in a hurt, savage snarl, Vanellope stood up in the pit of her kart, doubled over the steering wheel with her hands gripping the windshield, and screamed as loud as she could.

Her hoarse, shrill voice echoed for a fleeting instant over the Sugar Rush valley and then quickly scattered into silence. Her chest aching, Vanellope collapsed back into the seat of her kart and burst into a fit of violent, furious crying - crying that was made up of as much frustrated growling as it was actual sobbing, and punctuated every so often with little gasps and hiccups. After several minutes of loud weeping, she rubbed one fist angrily over her streaming eyes and brought the other down in an impotent slam on the center of the steering wheel.

She didn't know how long she spent there, just sitting in her kart at the top of the Rainbow Bridge and crying, but when she finally stopped long enough to catch her breath and look up again, her eyes were red and sore, and her nose was beginning to run. She sniffled miserably and wiped it on her sleeve, settling her hands back on the steering wheel and forcing herself to take a few long, deep breaths.

_Stop it, crybaby, _she ordered herself fiercely, trying to calm the angry heat that was still smoldering inside of her. _Just stop it already. You're overreacting. So . . . . so she spent one night in his game. Big deal. It doesn't mean anything. Y-you've . . . you've done that hundreds of times. _

_Besides . . . it's still early. He probably wasn't planning to come for at least a couple hours yet . . . . just give him time. He'll be here . . . and he'll be here __**alone.**_

_He promised._

Vanellope sniffed again, smearing the last traces of salt water from her cheeks with the heel of her hand and narrowing her eyes sharply as she started the engine of her kart again. She revved the gas pedal twice with her foot, then released the clutch and sped away down the steep incline of the bridge, steeling herself against the bitter feelings that were still fighting for attention in her heart.

"He _promised," _she assured herself once more out loud, swerving her kart onto a side road when she reached the bottom of the bridge and heading in the direction of the Candy-cane Forest.

Vanellope kept her mouth clamped firmly shut and her eyes fixed on the road in front of her as she followed the easy loops and curves winding through the endless expanse of striped candy trees. She forced herself to focus exclusively on her driving, and . . . like it always did . . . the comforting familiarity and repetition of the task helped calm her down significantly.

There was, however, one mental image . . . one single, grating, infuriating shard of an image that she simply couldn't make disappear from her thoughts. In her mind's eye, no matter how hard she tried not to, she kept seeing _Mike_ - with that happy, almost smug little look on her freckled face - wrapped up obliviously in Ralph's sweater . . . the sweater that _she _had given him.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

A few short, groggy minutes after Ralph had awoken to what he thought was a sound at his window, but quickly decided must have been nothing more than a sound in his head, he blinked and tilted his eyes absently in the direction of his bed to see if Mike was still asleep . . . only to discover - with a startled jolt that roused him fully from the last lingering haze of sleepiness - that she was not in the bed at all.

Ralph's eyes popped wide open, and he tried to sit up straight to take a proper look around the small interior of his shack. It was only then that he realized there was something warm and substantial lying on top of him, and he had to stifle himself from gasping out loud in alarm. His heart skipping a beat, he quickly looked down . . . and knit his brow confusedly at what he thought, for a split second, was nothing more than the dark green sweater Vanellope had given him, which had apparently crawled out from under his bed and bundled itself up in his lap during the night.

Then, as he was looking at it, the sweater suddenly moved . . . . and all at once, like a bucket of cold water being tossed over his unsuspecting consciousness, he saw that it had hands and legs, and a swath of wildly curly hair half bunched inside the knitted collar and half trailing down his left side in a messy tangle.

Michelangela yawned, made a face as she stretched one arm briefly up in the air, then breathed a soft exhale and resettled herself in his lap. She laid one hand flat on his stomach and nuzzled her cheek over his heart for a few seconds before going still and silent again.

Ralph blinked.

Then he sat there, rigid as a statue, for a full five minutes. He didn't move, he scarcely breathed, and his eyes never once left the side of Mike's peaceful, expressionless face.

Finally, when his heart at last managed to slow back down below hummingbird speed and the lump in his throat had grown small enough that he could again swallow around it, Ralph lifted one hand from the floor and pinched himself on the shoulder. It smarted responsively, and he swallowed again, his pulse speeding back up a minute fraction. Then - still only partially convinced that he wasn't dreaming - he slowly, ever so slowly, lifted his shaking hand and gently prodded Mike's shoulder once with the tip of his finger.

She made a small, sleepy noise between her lips and turned her face further into his chest.

Ralph swallowed a third time, and this time his Adam's apple made an audible sound as it bobbed up and down.

For another silent, unbelievable moment, he sat there motionlessly and stared down at her, his mind veritably reeling as it tried to process the reality of her gentle weight and intense warmth pressing against him . . . the way her side rose and fell beneath the ample folds of his sweater with every shallow breath . . . the smell of her hair lying so close under his nose, a smell like paint and paper, and something else unidentifiably earthy.

Shortly afterward, when he would look back on it, Ralph wouldn't quite be able to decide for himself whether what he did next was done out of bravery, because of the things she had said to him the night before . . . or out of cowardice, because he would not have done it if she had been awake . . . but whatever the reason, the next moment, he found himself timidly lifting one hand and laying it over Mike's back, blanketing her and holding her more closely against him. Then, he closed his eyes and gently let his head fall forward until his nose and mouth were resting on the crown of her head, half of his face buried in the thick, wild waves of her hair.

For thirty sweet, silent seconds, he held her like that, caught up in a paroxysm of both disbelief and bliss . . . . and then, without so much as a twitch of movement to warn him, he heard her voice abruptly muttering loud and clear just beneath his face, and his eyes shot open.

"Mm . . . Ralph? Are you awake?"

In one smooth, rapid motion, he yanked his hand away from her and bolted sharply upright, making her start and fall away from his chest with a slight gasp of surprise. She sat up straight and blinked for a moment, sliding out of his lap and onto the wood floor in front of him.

Ralph rose quickly to his feet without looking at her. He stretched both arms over his head and feigned what he hoped was a convincing yawn, turning his back to her and fervently willing the bright flush to drain from his cheeks.

"Ahhh . . . y-yeah, _yeah, _just, ah . . . just woke up!" he declared, a touch louder than necessary. He made a show of stretching his shoulders and back, letting out a series of morning grunts and keeping his face turned pointedly away from her.

He heard Mike rise to her feet and let out another small yawn of her own. She clucked her tongue a few times . . . then, suddenly, snorted and broke into a fit of quiet giggling.

"Ha, a_haha . . . _look, Ralph!"

Curiosity winning out over his embarrassment, he turned around to look at her. She held her arms out from her sides and laughed again . . . the action of standing up had revealed the true extent to which his sweater was too big for her, and he had to admit that his first reaction was to chuckle as well. The sleeves flopped at least twenty inches past the tips of her fingers when straightened to their full length, and the hem nearly hung past her knees. Mike snorted again and shrugged at him.

"I found this under your bed last night. Hope you don't mind."

Ralph smiled and shook his head, the last traces of his discomfort fading and replaced with a relieved feeling of naturalness.

"Nah, 'course not. Heh - just make sure you don't _stretch_ it out . . . Vanellope gave that to me."

Mike began to laugh again, then stopped, the look in her eyes changing abruptly. She cleared her throat and looked away, paused for a moment, then absently slipped her arms into the body of the sweater and began fumbling to push it over her head.

"S-so, ah . . . " she began in a casual murmur, as if trying to change the subject. "Do you . . . do you think you have time to walk me back to Masterwork?"

Ralph glanced over his shoulder at the clock on the wall. It read six thirty-seven.

"Sure!" he answered happily. "I don't have to be - " he looked back at her, then stopped, blushing and quickly turning away again when he saw that she was once more wearing only a bandeau as she laid his sweater on the bed and worked to undo the knot in the sleeves of her smock. He didn't know why, but the sight of her standing there in his house in nothing but her leggings and the red band seemed somehow doubly as redolent as it did in the basement of Street Fighter.

_Evidently, __**that kind **__of shyness was a concept that had yet to work its way past the glitch and into her brain . . . ._

" . . . I . . . I, ah . . . ur-_hrm," _Ralph stammered for a moment, clearing his throat and keeping his eyes glued to the far wall of the room. "I . . . don't have to be in Sugar Rush to meet Vanellope for at least a couple hours yet. I've got plenty of time to walk you home."

He felt a hand on his forearm, and warily peeked back over his shoulder, exhaling silently with relief to see that she was once again buttoned up in her white smock. She smiled at him . . . and for some reason, he couldn't help but feel as if her smile was meant to hint at something she knew and he didn't . . . something secretive, and yet, at the same time . . . comforting.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Oh, _wow," _Ralph muttered under his breath about fifteen minutes later as the two of them stepped out of the tunnel and into the light of Mike's game.

He had never stopped to think about it before, but as the softly glowing rim of the ocean skyline came into view, Ralph suddenly realized that it was the first time in his life he had ever actually seen a sunrise firsthand. The nearest thing he had ever seen was the bright sunlight that would beam through the glass front doors of Litwak's and shine into the Fix-It Felix Jr. game screen at certain times of the year . . . . but that was nothing compared to the sight that greeted them as they entered Masterwork. The entire landscape of the game was bathed in a warm wash of morning light that painted everything from the ocean to the tops of the mountains with a golden sheen, and the sky overhead was a soft, cloudless blend of pinks and fuchsias.

Ralph continued to gaze in amazement at the ocean sunrise as he and Mike strolled their way leisurely up the footpath and across the grass, coming to a stop at the edge of the bank overlooking the shoreline.

"But . . . hey," Ralph said aloud, breaking suddenly from his fixation with a passing train of thought. "The sun in here sets _and _rises over the ocean?"

Mike turned to look at him blankly.

"Yeah . . . what about it?"

"Er . . . never mind," Ralph waved her off. He also noticed that a couple dozen yards behind her, her house was perfectly visible and sitting quietly at the edge of the shore, and he was once more stumped with the perplexing question of _why _the building's disappearing glitch only seemed to occur when Mike herself was inside of it . . . . but he quickly dismissed the thought for another time. It was probably nothing important, anyway.

For another moment, the two of them stood there side by side on the bank and silently admired the beauty of the sunrise . . . then, with a soft sigh and a shrug of contentment, Mike closed her fingers around Ralph's thumb and gave him a gentle tug, and they turned and walked hand-in-hand across the grass and up to her front door.

Once there, Mike stepped up onto the front stoop and turned around to face him, the added few inches of the step raising her a bit closer to his eye level . . . and all at once, the silence between them was suddenly charged and pregnant, and for no particular reason Ralph found himself shifting awkwardly on his feet as a tickling lightness began to flutter in his stomach. He realized that he and Mike were staring at each other, and both of their lips were parted as if they each had something pressing they wanted to say . . . but seconds passed, and neither of them seemed able to speak.

Then, just as his voice was finally on the verge of working its way up out of his throat, Ralph was startled by a sharp, sudden noise that seemed to come from both far away and directly beside him at the same time.

_BBBZZZPPPZZBT!_

It was a deep, vibrating sound that seemed to shudder through the ground beneath his feet and fill the air around him with an almost tangible static charge.

"What is that?" he asked, looking around the still seemingly peaceful landscape with an uneasy expression.

Mike narrowed her eyes quizzically, then opened her mouth in a soft noise of understanding.

"Ooohh, _that. _I hardly notice it anymore. It's just the game resetting . . . it does this every morning, exactly at 7."

This reply eased his perturbation . . . a bit . . . but Ralph kept turning his head and slowly scanning his eyes across the mountains with his brow slightly furrowed. There was no real rule of thumb regarding automatic resets . . . they varied drastically from game to game across the arcade. Some games experienced them every twenty-four hours, no matter what . . . some, like Fix-It Felix Jr., only had them if there was remaining damage to particular areas - like the building - at the moment the program's internal clock rolled over . . . and still other games didn't have them written into their programming at _all. _Generally, Ralph never gave much thought to them either way . . . . but _this _reset . . . . something about this reset bothered him. He couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, but something about it felt undeniably _off._

It was then that he happened to glance back in Mike's direction and saw, in the corner of his eye, an instantaneous crackle of blue light, flashing once and then vanishing . . . spots swam in front of him, and as he blinked them away he realized that the light had come from Michelangela's copper mailbox, which either she or the game's reset had reattached to its post at the side of her front stoop.

"What the . . . Mike . . . Mike, did you just see that?"

But she was looking neither at him, nor the mailbox. She had suddenly jerked her head to the right in the direction of the game entrance and was staring at it intensely, her eyes narrowed and her lips parted in speechless scrutiny. Ralph followed her gaze to look at the pair of dark stone arches on the far side of the game, but he could see nothing that appeared out of the ordinary. Ignoring his question, Mike slowly moved off of the stoop and took a few timid steps across the grass, never breaking her gaze from the mouths of the two tunnels.

His perplexity growing by the second, Ralph looked back at the mailbox . . . . and stopped. He blinked once, then twice, not sure if he was seeing it correctly or if it was just a trick of the light. He leaned closer to it and squinted, and after another moment of inspection, there was no denying it.

There, on the side of the mailbox, stamped clear as day in the copper underneath the block letters of Michelangela's name . . . . a second word was written. A word that he was absolutely positive had not been there when he looked at it the first time four days ago.

Ralph leaned in even closer, putting his face just inches away from the side of the box and almost fogging the copper with his breath as he silently tried to mouth the unfamiliar word that, from the looks of it, he assumed had to be another name.

_Ar . . . Art . . . Arte . . . ._

" . . . Artemisio?" he finally muttered out loud, only able to guess at the pronunciation.

Ralph stood up straight and narrowed his eyes quizzically at the mailbox.

_Artemisio . . . . what in the world was an Artemisio?_

But before he could give the question another second's thought, the whole world around him seemed to suddenly light up with another dazzling flash of electric blue, this time rippling in an instantaneous wave not over the mailbox, but Mike's house itself. Ralph let out a startled yelp and squeezed his eyes shut, almost momentarily blinded by the intensity of the blue flare . . . but when he squinted his eyes open a few seconds later, it was gone, and everything was the same as it had been before it came.

Everything except the mailbox. Ralph looked down at it and blinked in disbelief . . . . the letters of the second name were abruptly gone again, vanished as if they had never been there at all.

Ralph's jaw dropped in an expression of equal parts incredulity and annoyance, and he let out a growling moan of frustration as he turned to pin Mike's back with a baffled stare.

"What the heck kind of crazy reset _is _this, anyway?" he demanded, gesturing to her house with one arm. "You're telling me this happens every day . . . and it doesn't seem _odd _to you? Mike? _Mike . . . . _are you even listening to me?"

She didn't move or respond. For another moment, she just stood there stock still in the grass a few feet away, with her back to him and the house and her gaze fixed immovably on the distant tunnels. Her arms were hovering tensely a few inches from her sides, as if she were preparing to run any second. When she finally turned back to look at Ralph, her eyes were wide with an expression he couldn't read, and the irritated glare immediately melted from his face.

"What?" he asked blankly. "What is it? What's going on here?"

It took her a short moment to reply, and when she finally did, her voice was hollow.

"I saw something."

Ralph just looked at her, his brow furrowing slightly with concern. He couldn't tell whether she was deathly frightened, or wildly excited.

"Saw _what, _Mike?"

"In . . . in the tunnel. The tunnel on the _right. _It was like . . . a light, a _blue _light, dancing there in the entrance . . . but at the same time it _wasn't _a light at all, it was like . . . like something made of electricity, something . . . _alive, _almost . . . "

"Yes! That's what I've been trying to tell you!" Ralph blurted out, motioning again to her house and mailbox. "I just saw the _same thing_ on your - "

"I have to find out what it is."

She cut him off with a voice so sharp and uncompromising that he stopped and lowered his hands, almost forgetting at once all about the flash around her house and the disappearing second name on the mailbox. Her eyes were boring straight into his, her mouth clamped shut in an unyielding line.

"You mean . . . this _isn't _part of the normal reset?" he asked perplexedly.

Mike shook her head firmly.

"I don't know. I've never been outside when it happened before. But it doesn't matter . . . I _saw _something there, something I . . . I can't explain it, Ralph, but I just know it _means _something, something _important. _And I have to find out what it is."

Ralph's eyes widened slightly, the uncharacteristic hardness and determination of her tone contrasting sharply in his mind with sudden, unbidden flashes of memory from the night when they'd first met.

"_Why . . . why did you ask which tunnel I came through?" he had asked her that night, leaning through the open half of her doorway as torrents of rain pounded down on him from the sky outside. "Where does the one on the right lead to?"_

_She had been so frightened, she had scarcely been able to answer him._

"_I - I don't know. I don't know where they lead, I don't know what they're __**for**__. All . . . all I know is that . . . l-last night . . . out of the t . . . tunnel on the __**right**__, there was . . . there was . . ."_

"_There was what?" he had urged her anxiously. "There was __**what**__?"_

"_There . . . there was . . ."_

_And then, a ripple of __**blue light **__had flashed through her code, and she had forgotten . . . the first time her glitch had made her forget something._

But the girl standing in front of him on the grass now, with her eyes like flecks of green steel and the golden light of morning glowing around her hair like a tangled halo, was almost unrecognizable from the shrinking, terrified waif he had met only a few short days ago.

Ralph took one slow, uncertain step toward her, his gaze never breaking from hers.

"Mike . . ." he said softly, almost disbelievingly, his eyes narrowing as he tried hopelessly to make sense of everything that was happening; " . . . Mike, are you . . . are you saying you want to . . . to . . . ?"

He trailed off, and she shook her head firmly once more.

"No. I don't want to, Ralph . . . but I _have _to. I have to find out where it leads. I have to go into the tunnel on the right."


	33. Chapter 32: The Beginning of the End

**A/N: **Gear up, gentle readers, because from this point on . . . we're cookin' with fire.

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 32: The Beginning of the End_

_SLAM!_

"AAGH!"

A sharp, metallic banging noise pierced the warmth and stillness of the room as fiercely as the report of a gunshot, jerking Felix out of a sound sleep and making him sit bolt upright in the bunk with a frantic yelp. He clapped one hand over his pounding heart and took a few deep, steadying breaths, his nerves so frazzled that a light perspiration had instantly broken out on his forehead. He waited another few seconds for his pulse to calm down, then wiped the back of his hand across his brow with a weary sigh and looked around for the source of the alarming noise. He found it immediately.

On the other side of Calhoun's small, utilitarian quarters deep in the barracks of Hero's Duty, the door to the bathroom was ajar - it was the sound of it banging into the metal wall as it was thrown open that had woken him - and a narrow rectangle of blinding white light was beaming into the dark room. Felix squinted at it and shuffled a foot closer to the edge of the bed, his confusion tightening into a sharp twist of worry when he quickly discovered that his wife was no longer lying beside him on the wall-mounted bunk. The red, glowing numbers on the digital clock set into the wall next to him read seven twenty-two a.m.

"T . . . Tammy?" he asked quietly, sliding his legs over the side of the bed and lowering his bare feet onto the floor. His voice resonated faintly in the small, metal chamber. "Sweetheart? Is . . . everything okay in there?"

There was no answer. Felix took a step closer to the bathroom and saw that the tap was running in the sink, and that lying over the threshold of the doorway was a tin cup that had spilled water all across the floor. He took another step closer . . . and all at once, his heart abruptly stopped pounding and for a full three seconds went deathly still, his insides going cold with shock and fear as his eyes fell upon something else lying on the floor of the bathroom.

_"Tammy!" _Felix cried out in a horrified gasp, rushing through the doorway and dropping to his knees on the cold, white tile beside the collapsed figure of his wife. His mouth dry and his whole body trembling, Felix bent over and cupped Calhoun's face with his palm, tilting it up to look at him and quickly checking to make sure she hadn't struck her head on the floor when she fell. She was pale and sweating, her eyes squeezed shut and her teeth bared in a painful grimace. He tried to help her sit up to rest against him, but her limbs were locked stiffly in place, every muscle in her body tense and quivering as if twisted tight by an invisible wire.

"Tammy! What is it? What's wrong!?" Felix pleaded, his voice thin and shaking with panic. "Honey, look at me! Can you hear me? Tammy!? _Tammy!"_

Calhoun gave no sign that she could hear him, or that she was even aware of his presence, but only cringed and began making small, pained noises between her teeth as her body was suddenly seized by a sharp convulsion that shuddered through her and drew her knees closer to her chest. She rolled to her side and tried to curl into a ball as more spasms rippled and twitched through her limbs.

Nearly on the verge of tears, Felix swallowed and forced himself to keep breathing steadily, forbidding himself to panic. He seized Calhoun's face with both hands and pressed them firmly over her temples as her head thrashed spastically from side to side, struggling for a full minute before he could finally hold her still enough to get another good look at her. The sweat was rolling down her forehead in beads now, and her eyes were shut so tightly that her brow was twitching over them.

"Tammy," Felix said loudly, fighting to keep his voice as calm as possible. _"Tamora. _It's me, Felix. Tammy . . . please . . . _please . . . _if you can hear me . . . _open your eyes."_

Then, suddenly, as if he'd unknowingly spoken the magic words, the spasms and shudders racking her body stopped all at once and Calhoun went perfectly still, frozen in her contorted position. The agonized grimace on her face slowly relaxed, and after another few seconds her eyes fluttered cautiously open.

The instant they did, Felix jumped back and let out a startled cry of alarm. The dark etchings of pain had vanished from his wife's features, but her eyes . . . the whites of her eyes weren't white anymore. They were _blue_, and glowing with a pale, eerie light that bled out onto her skin and flickered when she blinked. For a few horrified seconds, the two of them just stared at each other.

When Felix found his voice again, it issued out from the back of his throat in a frightened croak.

"S . . . sweetheart?"

For another split second, his wife just gaped at him with an expression of silent confusion, her glowing blue eyes narrowing slowly at him as if she had no idea who or what he was supposed to be . . . . then, without the slightest hint of warning, her face twisted into a look of absolute horror and she let out a bloodcurdling scream that recoiled off the walls of the tiny bathroom like a ricochet.

Before Felix could blink, his wife put both hands on his chest and shoved him away from her with such force that he heard one of the tiles on the wall behind him crack when his back and shoulders slammed into it. Stars swam in front of him, and by the time the surge of pain and dizziness had faded enough for him to look up again, Calhoun had already sprung up off of the floor and bolted through the doorway.

"TAMMY!" Felix shouted, wincing and holding the back of his throbbing head with one hand as he scrambled to his feet and stumbled out of the bathroom. He caught one last glimpse of her as she was wrenching open the heavy iron door of her room and went sprinting down the hallway, her bare feet rapidly slapping the floor and echoing in the empty metal corridor. His head still woozy and his thoughts reeling, Felix paused just long enough to grab his hammer from its resting place on the room's single table, then took off after her as fast as his feet would carry him.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As they stood together in front of the cavernous mouth of the tunnel on the right and stared forward into its seemingly unending darkness, Mike heard Ralph swallow heavily beside her and turned to look up at him.

"You, ah . . . you're _absolutely_ sure about this?" he murmured apprehensively, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.

Despite the hysterical little voice deep inside her that screamed a fervent _no, _Mike pursed her lips and nodded, squeezing her left hand tighter around Ralph's finger and her right around the handle of her Battle-strokes brush. She held the brush so that it rested over her right shoulder with the bristles pointing backward, and issuing out from the bristles was a tight cord of white paint that trailed back and was looped securely around a giant black boulder which Ralph had carried over from the beach and placed carefully outside the opening of the tunnel.

"Yes," Mike answered firmly, willing herself not to let on how nervous and afraid she really was. "I _have _to know, Ralph . . . I have to find out, once and for all."

Ralph swallowed again and set his jaw, but gave her a resigned nod.

"Well . . . alright, then. H-here . . . here goes _something."_

He closed his hand around hers, enveloping her arm up to the elbow and pulling her a few inches closer to his side. They each lifted their eyes straight ahead, took a deep breath in unison, and without another moment's hesitation, stepped forward into the black mouth of the tunnel on the right.

For many long, anxious minutes, they walked steadily forward in near silence, the only sound the patter of their mismatched footsteps on the smooth, invisible floor. The further they progressed from the tunnel opening, the dimmer and more inadequate the morning light from Masterwork grew, until finally they found themselves entirely submerged in blind darkness and had to slow their pace to a cautious crawl.

"Wish I'd thought to get a light from the kitchen," Mike muttered regretfully, adjusting the brush and glancing back over her shoulder. Even the white paint line, which was feeding out continuously behind them as they went, was no longer visible in the consuming blackness.

She felt Ralph shrug. "Too late now," he answered blandly. After he spoke, Mike presently noticed that something about the sound of his voice . . . and hers, for that matter . . . seemed odd to her, and it took another moment for her to realize what it was.

"Hey . . . Ralph," she thought aloud, turning to look in his direction, even though she knew she wouldn't see him. "Does it seem strange to you that there isn't any echo in here?"

"What?"

"Our voices and footsteps . . . they don't echo in here like they do in the other tunnel. Listen."

They kept walking, and after a few seconds Ralph gave an intrigued grunt.

"Huh. That is weird."

Mike nodded. "It doesn't sound like we're in a tunnel at all . . . more like we're in a tiny room, or . . . or out in the open somewhere."

Ralph's grip tightened imperceptibly around her forearm.

"I don't like this," he muttered nervously, and she could almost tell from the tone of his voice that he was turning his head to look around them at the pervading blackness. "Let me find the wall so we don't run into it, at least."

She obediently moved with him as he inched cautiously to the left, keeping his grasp on her with one hand and feeling around blindly with the other. He took another step . . . then another . . . then, after another still, he let out a confused murmur and began walking quickly again, towing Mike behind him as he went.

"What the . . . !?"

"What?" she cried. "What is it?"

"There's . . . . there's no wall in here!" he sputtered, walking faster and curving sharply to the left, then the right, half stumbling as he thrust his free arm frantically in every direction. "I can't find the tunnel wall!"

Mike felt her chest seize with a frightened pang.

"M . . . m-maybe we're just following a bend in the cable?" she stammered feebly.

Ralph didn't answer. He was beginning to breathe harder, and she could feel a subtle moisture accruing in the center of his palm. He pulled her sharply to one side and they ran a straight line together for a full thirty seconds, their bare feet padding rapidly in the strange, echoless darkness . . . but still they found nothing. Ralph began to run even faster, and Mike suddenly found herself tripping just trying to keep up with him.

"Ralph . . . _slow down!" _she pleaded breathlessly, almost losing her hold on the paintbrush and clutching it anxiously to her chest. The paint lifeline was feeding out so swiftly she could hear it whizzing and rushing beside her ear, almost like the sound of a faucet running on high.

What Ralph said next made the small knot of fear that was tightening in her chest instantly bloom into a surge of full-on panic.

"I . . . I can't!" he half-shouted, and it was obvious from his gasping tone that he was even more shocked than she was. "I can't stop! Something's _pulling_ me!"

No sooner had he spoken those last words when Mike heard him give a startled yelp, and their velocity doubled with a shuddering jolt . . . her feet were lifted clear off the floor, and all at once they were no longer running but flying noiselessly through the darkness in one invisible direction, the whipping of their hair and clothes the only indicator of the tremendous speed at which they were moving.

Ralph gripped Mike's forearm like a vice and _pulled_, struggling for a moment and then giving a sharp groan of effort as he finally managed to heave her up and around so that instead of trailing behind him, she was now being flattened against his chest by the momentum, the arm still holding the brush now reaching over his shoulder. He secured her protectively with both hands around her back, and for what seemed like one endless moment of suspended time, they stayed that way . . . simultaneously frozen in place and hurtling rapidly forward through the darkness, both of them too breathless and stunned to even cry out.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The next thing Ralph knew was that all of a sudden, a tiny point of blinding white had appeared out of nowhere in the blackness, searing into his dilated pupils like a sunspot. As he looked at it, he realized that the spot was growing steadily larger, and an instant later he realized that this was because he and Mike were flying straight toward it. He reflexively tightened his hold on her, and scarcely ten seconds later the circle of white was no longer a hole in the distance, but an endless expanse of brilliant white surrounding them in every direction, just as completely as the darkness had a moment before.

As soon as they rocketed through the opening, out of the black abyss and into the white one, their velocity was abruptly arrested by some unseen, cushioning force that soon slowed them to a complete stop. The moment they were no longer hurtling forward, Ralph heaved an enormous gasp and realized that he had unconsciously been holding his breath. His thudding heartbeat gradually began to slow down, and he cautiously loosened his death grip on Mike and let her slide gently away from his chest. Her eyes were wide and her face flushed with adrenaline, and she looked as shaken and disoriented as he felt.

Her chest heaving slightly, Mike drifted a few inches away from him and slowly began to look around at the world of featureless white. She gripped the handle of her brush defensively with both hands, as if ready to lash out with it at any second . . . it was then that Ralph noticed the paint rope had been severed at some point during the journey. His spirits sank with a pang of fear, but Mike was already looking so anxious that he decided not to mention it. _Worrying about it wouldn't bring the lifeline back, anyway . . . ._

"W-where . . . where are we?" Mike stammered, her eyes flashing as they darted back and forth.

"I have no idea . . . " Ralph muttered truthfully. He turned to look back in the direction they had come and saw a black hole, the opening through which they had passed, hanging in midair not far behind them. " . . . but . . . at least we can still see the way back."

"But how did we even get here?" Mike pressed. "What happened to the tunnel . . . . what pulled us in here?"

Ralph shook his head helplessly, scanning the endless white all around them that was so bright it nearly stung his eyes.

"I don't know . . . one minute I was running, and the next there was this . . . I don't know, something invisible, some kind of _force _pulling me forward. It was almost like it was sucking us toward this place . . . whatever _this place _is. Come on . . . we'd better see if we can take a look around."

Ralph tried to take a step forward, and it was only then that he suddenly discovered there was no surface underneath his feet. He looked down with a startled jolt and saw nothing but more white, stretching down endlessly just as it did in every direction . . . he flailed his arms and legs, and realized that they had been drifting in a vacuum without gravity the entire time. He looked up at Mike and saw that even her hair was floating in a weightless cloud around her head, following her movements like seaweed drifting underwater. He wondered how on earth he hadn't noticed it before.

"Hey!" Mike spoke up suddenly, her voice cracking with astonishment and making him jump. "Over there . . . I think I see something!"

Ralph turned his gaze in the direction she was pointing, and after a few seconds of careful squinting, discovered that she was right . . . there _was _something there. It was dim and translucent, nothing more than a shadowy square of discoloration hovering in the midst of the endless white . . . but whatever it was, it was _definitely _there.

"Come on, Ralph!" Mike cried eagerly, lowering her brush and grabbing his hand.

"Wait a minute . . . how are we supposed to _get over_ there?" he protested . . . but even as he was speaking, he discovered that they were already moving together through the weightless void, drifting in a straight line with increasing speed and drawing steadily closer to the strange shape in the distance, as if their thoughts alone were propelling them toward it. Within seconds, they were directly in front of it . . . up close, it appeared to be nothing more than a large, flat, pale gray square just floating there. It was about half the size of the Fix-It Felix Jr. game screen, and when Mike leaned in close to it, he could see the blurry colors of her reflection on the vertical surface.

"What . . . _is _it?" he muttered blankly, after they had both studied the object in silence for a moment.

Her anxiety apparently fade swiftly, Mike narrowed her eyes at the hovering screen as she slipped her paintbrush absently back into the inner pocket of her smock.

"I'm not sure," she answered. "But I think . . . I sort of have this feeling, that if I just . . . "

She trailed off, and Ralph watched with baited breath as she cautiously reached out and inched her hand closer and closer to the gray surface. She hesitated another second, then squeezed her eyes shut and plunged her hand forward . . . Ralph breathed a sharp exhale of relief when her fingers slipped harmlessly through it, phasing into the gray screen as if it had no more substance than a shadow.

"It's not anything," he dismissed, scanning his eyes over it once more. "Just a glitchy patch, or a hologram, or something . . . "

But Mike was still hovering with her nose just a few inches from the screen, peering in and scrutinizing it closely as she moved her hand back and forth.

" . . . no . . . no, I don't think so," she murmured quietly. "I think . . . I'm not sure . . . I _think_ I can see something on the other side."

She pushed her arm further through the screen up to her shoulder, and Ralph tensed up nervously and drifted closer to her.

"Be _careful!" _he hissed, grabbing her other arm with his hand. "We don't know what this thing is for!"

To his dismay, she ignored him, leaning in even closer until her face and most of her head had phased through the screen . . . she let out a sharp gasp that was muffled by the intangible wall, and suddenly pulled back to look at him with an amazed, dumbfounded expression.

"Ralph, you _have _to see this!" she cried breathlessly, and before he could even open his mouth to reply she had given his arm a fervent _tug _and pulled him clear through the screen, both of them phasing out on the other side and looking around with matching expressions of awe at the place in which they abruptly found themselves.

They were still floating weightlessly in a vast expanse with no visible walls or floor . . . but unlike the homogenous white on the other side of the screen, the backdrop of this world was almost like a clear, cloudless night sky, an unending span of black and gray and midnight blue and swatches of blazing magenta, all shifting and swirling and overlapping each other in a continual cosmic dance . . . . and as far as the eye could see in every direction, scattered randomly across the entirety of the dark environment like twinkling stars, there were _screens_ . . . screens exactly like the one they had just passed through, but bright and glimmering in pale shades of every color, and each of them throwing off a bright white glow that stood out sharply in the darkness. As they floated in place, tiny bright lights were zipping back and forth all around them like comets, flying out of one screen and jumping into another. The busy, whirring expanse seemed to go on forever and ever.

Almost too mesmerized to speak, with his mouth hanging open and his hand still closed in a protective grip around Mike's arm, Ralph turned to look back at the screen through which they had come. From this side, it was not gray but a dazzling white, and floating just above it was a neat, uniform row of white letters and numbers.

"P - G - C, P - R, M . . . four, seven, eight, three, six nine five two," Ralph read aloud softly to himself, then narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "PGC, PRM . . . what does that stand for? M . . . M for Masterwork, maybe? What do you think, Mike? . . . . Mike?"

When she didn't respond, Ralph turned to look at her, and for a brief, alarming moment he thought that she had been seized again by one of her memory glitches . . . but after another few seconds, the blank look on her face slowly changed to an expression not of forgetfulness, but of bald, utter revelation.

"Ralph . . . " she whispered softly without looking at him, her voice barely audible even in the pervading silence all around them. " . . . . . I _know where we are."_

He widened his eyes at her, his pulse quickening with anticipation. She turned her head in a slow, disbelieving circle, the weightless tendrils of her hair wafting around her in a spiraled cloud.

"This is . . . . this is _the Internet."_

Ralph blinked. He stared at her for a few seconds in deadpan silence.

"What's the _Internet?" _he asked blankly.

Mike narrowed her eyes as she looked around.

"I'm . . . I'm not totally sure, but . . . this is _it, _I _know _it is!"

"How?"

"I just . . . I just _know! _It's like . . . it's almost like I've _been here _before, somehow . . . "

"But that's impossible! You said yourself, you had no idea what the tunnels in your game were for . . . unless . . . unless, maybe . . . you really _did _come here once before, and your glitch made you forget?"

Mike just shook her head helplessly. "I have no idea. All I know is that this place is just . . . _familiar, _to me."

Ralph gave a frustrated sigh, furrowing his brow and holding her hand a bit tighter as he looked around once more at the strange, incredible world surrounding them.

_Internet . . . the **Internet** . . . . now that he stopped and thought about it, he was sure he'd heard the word at least a couple times before. Probably Litwak or one of the gamers had mentioned it . . . . or, come to think of it, he might even recollect Calhoun saying something about it once or twice . . . . but he couldn't for the life of him remember what she'd said . . ._

"Well . . . . what_ever _it is, it's obviously got a link to your game," Ralph muttered, gesturing back to the screen behind them. "So . . . does that mean that all these other screens are pathways to _other _games? Other games in the arcade?"

"I don't know, but . . . I don't _think _so," Mike answered, and the tone of her voice made Ralph glance at her worriedly. She sounded suddenly distracted and agitated, and she was holding her forehead in her palm as if she had a pain there.

"Mike? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"Yeah . . . yeah, fine," she mumbled unconvincingly, taking her hand away and cringing slightly. "It's just . . . I think something in here is making my head hurt, a little."

Ralph frowned anxiously.

"We'd better get out of here," he declared firmly, turning them back towards the Masterwork screen. "This place is starting to give me the _creeps."_

"No, no, not yet!" Mike pleaded, tugging him back in the other direction. "Please, Ralph, we _can't _go yet! Not until I know what all of this means!"

"It's not _safe, _Mike! Look, you said you wanted to find out where the other tunnel lead to, and we _did . . . . _we can try to figure out what the _'Internet' _is for once we're back safe and sound in the arcade, now come on!"

He tried to pull her toward the screen, but she somehow resisted him and gave another fervent yank on his arm, and they floated several yards deeper into the void, the Masterwork screen shrinking further away from them. Evidently his earlier suspicions had been correct, and it was the power of one's thoughts rather than physical actions that enabled movement in this strange world.

"But I _know _something about this place, Ralph, I can feel it!" she cried earnestly, pinning him with poignant stare. "I don't know _what _I know yet, but . . . I swear, it's like just being here is stirring up all kinds of things in my head, like . . . like _bees _waking up in a beehive! Ralph, what if I can get back all those moments I've forgotten since I was plugged in, or . . . or what if I can remember what my back-story is? What if I can figure out how to get rid of my _glitch?"_

Ralph opened his mouth to argue again . . . . then stopped, the look on her face silencing his protestations before he could form them. He held her gaze a second longer, then slumped his shoulders and gave a heavy, reluctant sigh.

"Alright . . . . _fine. _We'll stay a _few minutes _longer."

Mike beamed gratefully at him and took his hand in both of hers without saying another word, turning them around and gliding them at a somewhat disconcerting speed further into the void as more of the flashing lights zipped past them. The Masterwork screen shrank smaller and smaller behind them, and Ralph eyed it nervously over his shoulder.

"Just make sure we don't get _lost!" _he begged, shuddering inwardly at the mere thought of drifting endlessly through that silent universe.

Mike shook her head reassuringly. "Don't worry . . . I'm starting to think you _can't _get lost in here. It's like whatever place you focus your thoughts on, that's where you go . . . it's how we're _moving _right now."

Still not entirely convinced, Ralph swallowed thickly and turned back to look ahead of them.

"So . . . where are your thoughts _taking_ us?"

"There," she pointed straight ahead in the direction they were gliding to the screen that was nearest them . . . indeed, it was the _only _screen that seemed to be anywhere near them. The others were all so far away that they were little more than white dots floating in the distance.

Ralph frowned. "Why _that _one? Where does it lead?"

Mike just shrugged and kept going. "I don't know . . . but it's the only one close to Masterwork, and if we could get in through _that_ screen, we must be able to get _out_ again through any of the others."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I don't know, I just . . . I just _know. _I told you . . . I can't explain it, but I'm almost _sure_ I've been here before."

Ralph sighed again and glanced once more over his shoulder as they slowed to a stop in front of the glowing, unfamiliar screen. The portal back into Masterwork now seemed uncomfortably far away from them indeed . . . . but he was grateful that it at least had a label by which they could identify it. The screen in front of them now had a similar tag hovering above it, but it had fourteen digits rather than eight, and no letters. Ralph quickly tried to memorize the serial number just to be safe, but before he could finish Mike had already pulled him through the intangible screen, this time not even bothering to test it with her hand first.

Together, they phased effortlessly through to the other side, and once there they saw . . . white. It was another endless abyss of pure white, exactly like the one on the other side of the Masterwork portal. Ralph and Mike both looked around for a few seconds, then glanced questioningly at each other.

"So . . . where are we now?" Ralph asked. "In between the Internet and another game?"

"Only one way to find out," Mike answered him, and Ralph saw that her eyes and index finger were both pointing in a straight line from the screen behind them across the white expanse, where not too far away there was a circular black opening, almost a mirror image of the one at the end of the Masterwork tunnel. Without waiting for him to reply, Mike began leading them toward it.

"Uhh . . . maybe this isn't such a great idea," Ralph murmured anxiously. "Barging uninvited into strange games can be pretty dangerous . . . _believe me, _I _know . . . "_

But Mike wasn't paying him any attention. They began to glide faster and faster through the white emptiness toward the black hole, until after a short moment Ralph found himself having to clamp his hand tighter around Mike's arm just to hold on. She looked back at him over her shoulder, her hair streaking like a flag behind her head, and he saw that the excited gleam in her eyes had changed suddenly to a spark of alarm.

"Ralph . . . it's happening again!" she cried, the hole rushing towards them at a frightening speed. "Something's pulling us like before!"

"Hold _on!"_ was all Ralph could think to say . . . and the next second, they had rocketed through the dark opening and were hurtling once more through pitch blackness, and once again Ralph had no idea how many seconds or minutes the trip lasted before all of a sudden, he felt his toes skimming over a flat, solid surface. He found the floor with the balls of his feet and began churning his legs frantically, Mike running along in front of him with her heels grazing him every few seconds until their momentum had finally decreased enough that they came reeling to a breathless stop a few seconds later.

Blinking in the pervasive, disorienting blackness, Ralph doubled over and braced his hands on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath, thankful to be back in a place where there were floors and gravity again.

"We . . . we must be . . . at the end of . . . another tunnel . . . again," Mike wheezed somewhere beside him, pausing between words to gasp for breath.

Ralph straightened up and looked around out of habit, already knowing that he wouldn't see any landmarks to guide them. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but being suspended in total, impenetrable darkness with no lifeline _and _no idea which direction to go in was frightening him a great deal more than the sturdy tone of his voice let on.

"Yeah, but . . . if there are no walls, then how do we find our way _through _it?"

"I guess we just start walking," Mike suggested, and he was amazed at how calm she seemed to be. She groped around for a minute until she found his arm with her hand, then took hold of him firmly and set off at a brisk, aimless pace forward through the darkness. Forced to admit that they had no other option, Ralph uneasily followed alongside her.

They had only been walking for a few minutes when Mike let out a startled, irritated yelp.

_"Ouch!"_

Ralph jumped and turned in her direction.

"What?"

_"Oooh . . . _agh, nothing, I just stubbed my toe, is all," she muttered . . . then, in an abruptly different tone of voice, cried out, "Ralph . . . I _stubbed my toe on something!"_

She immediately let go of his arm and began throwing her hands all around, and a second later he heard her palms land against something solid . . . the wall of the tunnel. He also realized that every sound they were making was echoing all around them, and the very next instant he discovered that his eyes had adjusted to a very faint light that was glowing just strongly enough from somewhere up ahead to cast a visible paleness on Mike's skin and smock.

"There!" he gasped gratefully, his heart pounding as he seized her by the hand and they took off at a dead run in the direction of the light.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Seconds later, Mike and Ralph came bursting out of the end of the tunnel and stumbling onto a surface that was so clean and so slick, they hadn't taken three steps before their feet flew out from under them and they both fell down face first at the same time.

_"Ooof!"_

_"Ooof!"_

Mike cringed as her knees and elbows banged against the hard, smooth floor, the smart momentarily distracting her from the dull, constant pain that had been throbbing somewhere near the front of her brain ever since they'd first entered the realm of the Internet. She heard Ralph groan irately next to her, his hands and feet making heavy, soft _thump _noises as he pushed himself up off the floor, then turned and helped her back onto her own feet as well. As soon as they had both recovered from the surprise fall, they stood up straight and looked around. After a few seconds of silent, puzzled observation, Mike narrowed her eyes concernedly and spoke up in a voice that was much less confident and eager than it had been just minutes before.

"This . . . this doesn't look like a game, Ralph."

The place they were now standing in was forboding and dark . . . not anywhere near as dark as it had been in the tunnel, but gray and shadowy so that one could barely make out the cold features of the structure surrounding them. They appeared to be inside a very large, but nevertheless fully enclosed room of some sort, with dark gray walls and a high, dark gray ceiling. Directly in front of them, the floor jutted up a sharp twelve feet or so, so that they seemed to be standing in a narrow, sunken portion of the room . . . and behind them, on either side of the port they'd just entered through, there were several other identical ports opening into other separate tunnels. The only source of dim light in the whole of the square, cavernous space came from somewhere unseen above and beyond the ledge in front of them.

Ralph turned his head in a slow, uncertain half-circle, scanning his eyes from one upper corner of the ceiling to the other.

"No, it doesn't," he muttered in agreement. "Or at least, not a game that's turned _on. _Come on . . . let's see if we can get a better view from up there."

Without asking her permission or waiting for her to respond, Ralph carefully but swiftly scooped Mike up in one hand and positioned her into the crook of his arm, the same way he had held her when he had carried her down the side of her own building in Masterwork just a few nights ago. She reflexively put both arms securely around his neck, and with a faint grunt of effort Ralph heaved them both up onto the side of the wall in front of him, using his free hand to grab at odd, rectangular shapes that Mike noticed were sticking out all over in some sort of grid pattern.

The short climb took only a few seconds, and after he had pulled them both up onto the higher section of the floor, Ralph set Mike gently back down on her feet, and they looked up.

Their mouths dropped opened in unsion.

One of the four walls of the enormous room was actually not a wall at all . . . it was a glass screen, and it was through this screen that the dim light was filtering. They both took a few cautious, disbelieving steps closer to the window and peered out at the world on the other side of it. It was almost exactly like looking through the Masterwork game screen back in her studio, only twenty times larger . . . and instead of the huge, brightly colored expanse of the arcade laid out in front of them, they were looking into what appeared to be a small, cramped room with only a few beams of summer sunlight shining through the windows of its two closed doors. Directly in front of the screen was a chair and the edge of a wooden desk scattered over with paperwork and a few small toys, and on the wall beyond that was a large case of open shelves crammed with books and boxes and more paperwork, and beside that was a tall, metal filing cabinet.

After a long moment of stunned silence, Ralph finally spoke.

"I know what this is," he said suddenly, his voice calm, and at the same time hollow with amazement. "That out there, that's . . . that's Litwak's office, and that means . . . this must be Litwak's computer. We're _inside Litwak's computer."_

Mike blinked and narrowed her eyes incredulously at the dimly lit room outside, taking another few steps closer and laying her hand flat on the glass. The word _computer _resonated for a moment in the confines of her understanding . . . she had never heard it spoken before now, but she somehow already knew what it meant.

"Do you see, Ralph?" she muttered, looking back at him over her shoulder. "This _proves _it! We _were _inside the Internet just now . . . my game and this computer are both connected to it from the same building, _that's _why they were only the screens near each other!"

Ralph looked at her dubiously for a moment, running one hand through his hair as his brow furrowed with frustration. It was obvious that he was having trouble trying to connect all the pieces in his mind.

"Well . . . okay, all of _that _makes sense, I guess . . . but . . . what _now? _Okay, so Masterwork is hooked up to the Internet . . . so what? What has that got to do with your glitch?"

Mike narrowed her eyes again, turning back to look through the glass screen down at the edge of Litwak's cluttered desk.

"I . . . I don't know," she admitted quietly. "But it has to mean _something. _There has to be a _reason _I was so afraid of the tunnel on the ri - "

Mike halted in the middle of her sentence, her eyes widening and her jaw slowly descending. She pressed both hands on the screen and leaned forward until her breath fogged the glass, staring down disbelievingly at a sheet of yellow paper lying on Litwak's desk. It was covered in lines of black type, but one line at the very top of the page had just happened to catch her eye, the words scarcely readable in the weak light of the office, but just clear enough that if she squinted, she could still make them out . . .

_In regards to your recent trial purchase of item __**PGC-Pr. 478**__, test name, __**"Masterwork" **__. . . . _

"Mike?" Ralph's voice suddenly sounded faint and far away, even though he was standing right behind her. "What is it?"

_TTTSSZZYYEEEEIII!_

"AAHHH!"

A flash of electric blue filled her vision, and Mike opened her mouth and screamed as a horrible, ear-splitting noise - like the scraping of electric nails on a metal sheet - along with the most intense, staggering pain she had ever felt suddenly exploded together inside her head. The eruption was so sharp and unexpected it made her knees buckle, and she gripped the sides of her head with both hands as she crumpled to the floor, trying to block out the horrendous sound . . . only to find that covering her ears inexplicably seemed to make it grow even louder.

Now so faint and far away that she could scarcely hear it at all through the blare of the electronic screech, Ralph's frantic voice fought its way through to her, but was too muffled and dull for her to make out what he was saying. She felt his huge hands picking her up off of the floor, but the splitting agony in her brain was so severe that she couldn't even begin to open her eyes.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Far away, in another world on the other side of the arcade, the sun was shining down and glittering in bright sparkles off the granulated sugar pavement of the Rainbow Bridge.

In spite of the arcade being closed, the atmosphere in Sugar Rush was buzzing with activity, as it was every Sunday afternoon. Every track in the game, from the Royal Raceway to the Licorice Lava Pits, was alive and roaring with the sounds of firing engines and squealing tires as the entire roster of Sugar Rush racers celebrated their weekly day off with a series of raucous non-competitives . . . . the entire roster of racers, minus one.

Sitting cross-legged on the spoiler of her kart, parked once more at the highest peak of the rainbow road, Vanellope narrowed her staring gaze at the empty archway in front of her. With the exception of the fierce, menacing scowl that had been slowly growing darker and darker in the pits of her wide, hazel eyes, her face was completely blank. It had lost its last trace of emotion hours ago.

With one slow, significant motion of her jaw, Vanellope brought her teeth together and obliterated the last melting fraction of the lollipop in her mouth with a sharp, muffled _krunch, _then calmly took the stick from between her lips and flicked it aside. It landed in a small pile of other discarded sticks and candy wrappers that had gradually accumulated on the pavement beside her.

For one last still, solitary minute, Vanellope sat on the back of her kart and waited.

The archway in front of her remained empty and silent.

Her brow lowered darkly over her eyes.

Then - without saying a word, or allowing even a flicker of emotion to pass over her stony expression - Vanellope stood up, climbed down into the driver's pit, and started her engine. She revved it twice, wheeled the kart around in a smooth u-turn, and slammed her foot down on the gas pedal so hard she nearly cracked the candy finish. She sped away down the Rainbow Bridge without looking back.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

At that exact moment, in yet another world _not_ so far away from Sugar Rush, Felix was being pulled down behind an overturned mess hall table by Kohut just in time to sheild him from the blast of a consolidated, hand-held laser cannon that exploded against the metal surface at his back in a flash of green light and a splatter of hot plasma.

_TTSZEEOOM!_

The walls and floor of the Hero's Duty mess hall were pockmarked all over with smoldering blasts from the laser pistol. Half of the long dining tables had been flipped on their sides to construct the makeshift barricade behind which Felix and a handful of the other soldiers were taking cover . . . the other half of them had been scattered out of place at the far end of the room, and it was from atop one of them that Calhoun was firing at them, still dressed in nothing but the white tank and black underpants she'd fallen asleep in the night before.

Discovering that she'd used up the last of her weapon's charge, Calhoun let out a growl that was half frustration and half pure, frantic terror. She threw the handgun at the table where Felix and the others were crouched, and it left an angry dent in the sheet metal just beside his head. Now that she had run out of ammo, Felix chanced another desperate look at her over the edge of the table, but he only caught a fleeting glimpse of her panic-stricken face and the flashing blue glow of her eyes before she had scrambled across the tabletops, smashed the key-pad control lock of the mess hall door with her elbow so that it automatically slid open, and darted away down the corridor.

"Quick!" Felix cried, springing to his feet and leaping over the table. "She's on the move again!"

Following his lead, the ragtag passel of Hero's Duty soldiers - who hadn't had time to put on their battle armor when the 'incident' had roused them from sleep that morning, and had barely been able to arm themselves at all before giving chase after their inexplicably possessed sergeant - obediently charged over the barricade and ran after Calhoun in organized formation, Felix and Kohut bringing up the front of the group. As they ran, Kohut repeatedly buzzed fervent orders into the communication module strapped to his wrist.

"Calling all personnel, _repeat, _calling all personnel! We have a code Romeo at game base-level, code _Romeo_, and less than half the platoon here to contain it! All personnel report to game base-level _immediately! _It's the _SERGEANT, _for bit's sake! Where _are_ you useless maggots? Repeat, _calling all personnel!"_

Kohut snarled with frustration as they rounded a sharp corner in the hallway, Calhoun once more slipping out of sight several leagues ahead of them.

"Hurry! We _have _to stop her before she hurts herself!" Felix shouted fearfully.

"No, Fix-It . . . " Kohut countered him darkly, a deathly seriousness coming over his already grave voice. " . . . she's headed for the B-unit. We have to stop her before she reaches the _armory."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

After what felt like hours upon agonizing hours - though in reality, he had absolutely no idea how much time had elapsed since the moment Mike collapsed inside Litwak's computer - of frantic, miserable running and flying and phasing all the way back through the Internet, the voids between worlds and the final gloomy stretch of the tunnel on the right, Ralph at long last came bursting out of the darkness and back into the warm, welcoming sunshine and fresh air of Masterwork. He breathed a great gasp of relief when he felt soft grass beneath his feet again, and he hurried out in such eagerness that he very nearly tripped over the boulder that they'd placed outside the archway for a lifeline anchor.

The moment they were safely back inside the game, Ralph dropped to his knees on the sunny lawn and lowered Mike down onto the grass, supporting her back with one hand and shakily brushing the hair out of her face with the other. She hadn't moved or made a single sound throughout the entire journey home.

"Mike?" he said warily, his voice breathless and apprehensive. "Mike, _look at me . . . _what's the matter? What _happened!?"_

He could tell from looking that she was not unconscious, and he was overwhelmingly relieved to see that the expression of grating, abject pain was no longer etched into her face . . . but her whole body was still curled up in a rigid ball, her jaw clenched and her hands clamped immovably over her temples like she was trying to keep something trapped inside her skull. For a few seconds more, she didn't respond to him at all . . . then, just as he was beginning to grow desperate again, she hesitantly opened her eyes and looked up. Gradually, she let her legs straighten out on the grass and her hands ease away from the sides of her head ever so slowly, until at last she was sitting up normally and looking around as if having only just realized where she was.

"We're . . . back!" she blurted in surprise, blinking around her at the bright, cheerful landscape.

Ralph nodded, his chest still heaving shallowly. "I brought us back the way we went in. Something happened to you in Litwak's computer . . . all of a sudden, you just . . . you _screamed,_ then froze up, and collapsed, and . . . don't you re_member?_"

Mike looked at him strangely, as if trying to connect what he was saying with a separate inner thought of her own.

"Yeah . . . yeah, I remember," she answered slowly, letting her gaze trail absently down to the grass. "We were standing in the computer, and I was looking through the screen, and then . . . next thing I knew there was this _pain, _like . . . like something splitting apart inside my head, and there was this terrible _noise, _and . . . I . . . I don't know. I guess I must have just . . . sort of shut down until I was back here."

Ralph narrowed his brow anxiously, looking her once up and down and leaning over to study her face more closely. _She didn't __**look **__as if she were hurt anywhere . . ._

"But . . . you're feeling okay _now?"_

Mike paused briefly and held still, as if checking to make sure, then turned to him and nodded.

"Yeah," she said confusedly. "I feel perfectly fine."

Ralph breathed a long, slow exhale of exhaustion and let himself drop down on the grass next to her, leaning back on his hands and tilting his face skyward.

"Well, that settles it," he grumbled wearily, closing his eyes and drinking in the warmth of the sun on his face. "We are not _ever _setting foot in that tunnel again."

"What!?" Mike cried, snapping to attention and sitting up straight. "What are you talking about? I _have _to go back!"

"Why? So you can have . . . _whatever _that just was, happen to you again?"

"I was _so close _to finding something out, Ralph! I just _know _I was, I could _feel _it!"

"Finding out _what?"_ he pleaded exasperatedly, pinning her with a stern look. "As far as I can see, the only things either of us _found out _in there are that _one, _your game is hooked up to the Internet . . . _two, _whatever the Internet is, I _hate _it . . . and _three, _something about it _hurts you! _You said yourself when we were floating around in there that it was making your head hurt . . . but we kept going anyway, and look what happened! What if I hadn't been there to bring you back?"

Mike opened her mouth sharply to object again, then stopped as the heavy implication his words sank in, her face softening and shrinking back under his meaningful gaze. Ralph pursed his lips and looked her squarely in the eye.

"Listen to me, Mike," he said in a gentle, but serious tone. "I want you to please, _please,_ _PROMISE me _you won't go back into that tunnel. _Please."_

Mike was quiet for a moment. She looked as if she desperately wanted to argue, but the longer he stared at her without flinching, the more the stubborn edges of her expression eroded away until she finally gave a soft sigh of defeat and nodded reluctantly.

"I . . . guess you're right," she admitted glumly, pulling her knees up to her chest and resting her arms over them. "Okay, Ralph. I promise I won't go back."

He nodded firmly with approval, then blew a tired puff of air through his lips and flopped down flat on his back in the grass. For a few peaceful, contemplative minutes, neither of them said anything.

"It _was _amazing in there, though . . . wasn't it, Ralph?"

He opened his eyes, staring up thoughtfully at the brilliant cobalt of the cloudless sky.

" . . . . yeah . . . I guess it sorta was."

"So much infor_mation," _she muttered to herself, and the words struck him with a strange pang of déjà vu. "And the _time . . . _was it just me, or did time not even really seem to exist in there?"

Ralph scrunched one half of his face and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. As far as he was concerned, the whole excursion had been like a bad dream from beginning to end, and now that it was finally over, he didn't particularly want to try and dredge up any memories of what it had felt like.

"Well . . ." he paused, reluctantly letting his thoughts drift back to the eerie silence and weightlessness of the Internet void. " . . . I don't know if I'd say that. To me, it was more like . . . I don't know, like the _time _stayed normal, but for some reason we just couldn't keep track of - "

Ralph stopped dead in mid-sentence, and all at once his train of thought came screeching to a halt.

_Time. __**Time.**_

_Vanellope._

Ralph's eyes bugged open and he shot bolt upright so sharply that Mike gave a flustered shriek and jumped aside.

"_Geez, oh . . . _what!? What is it?" she cried.

Ralph's heart was pounding so high up the back of his throat he could hardly speak.

"What time is it?" he demanded, seizing Mike by the shoulders and giving her a quick shake. She looked at him like he was talking in gibberish.

"What?"

"What _time is it, woman!?" _he repeated frantically, and before she could answer he jerked his head back up to look at the sun again, this time paying attention to where it was in the sky. His already deflating spirits plummeted like a rock as he squinted up at the blazing yellow orb beaming down from directly over the mountains.

"Oh, man, oh man, oh _man!" _he muttered under his breath, letting go of Mike and scrambling to his feet. She shook herself once and stood up after him, still staring cluelessly.

"For Pete's sake! What is the _matter, _Ralph?"

"_Vanellope!" _he shot back incredulously, and the moment he said her name Mike's eyes flashed wide with a jolt of memory and she covered her mouth with one hand. "I promised Vanellope I would meet her in Sugar Rush first thing this morning, and the day's got to be _half over! _Oh, _man, _she's going to _kill me . . .!"_

Mike cringed empathetically and began shoving him stumblingly across the grass. "Well, why are you just standing there, then? _Go on, _get going!"

In spite of himself and the reeling horror of how completely he'd forgotten his promise to Vanellope, something inside of him was still hesitant to leave Mike alone after what had happened to her in Litwak's computer.

"You . . . you're absolutely _sure _you're okay, now?" he asked a final time as she was pushing her hands on the small of his back and half-propelling him toward the tunnels.

"Yes, yes, I'm _fine! _Shut up and _get moving . . . _if you miss your whole day with her, she's just going to blame _me!"_

Ralph started for a moment, briefly taken aback by the surprising ring of accuracy to this notion . . . but he quickly shrugged it off and obediently hurried toward the mouth of the tunnel on the left. Once there, he stopped for one last second to turn around and squeeze Mike in a rapid, meaningful embrace - then dropped her back on her feet and ducked into the tunnel.

"I'll come and see you tomorrow, Ralph!" she called after him with her hands cupped around her mouth, her voice echoing down the narrow passage.

"As soon as the arcade closes!" he agreed, shouting back to her over his shoulder . . . then, the Masterwork cable banked to the left and Mike vanished from view. He set his sights forward and took off at full speed, his heart already pounding and an anxious jitter twisting in his stomach.

_Oh please still be there, Vanellope . . . please understand, please, __**please **__understand . . . ._


	34. Chapter 33: Phase One

**A/N:** I've officially developed a love/hate relationship with writing this story. T_T

However, on another note that is nothing but love . . . my colleague, friend, and best supporter of this Ridiculous Thing I'm writing, **The Phantom Soldier, **is now writing a WIR story entitled "Be Careful What You Wish For". . . he only has the prologue posted so far, but I already want to tell all of you that it is AMAZING, and that you should absolutely go and check it out, _particularly_ ( but not exclusively ) if you're a Jawbreaker fan.

P.S., two illustrations for this chapter will be posted on my dA shortly.

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 33: Phase One_

_Plink . . . . . . . FFWWWOOOOSH!_

_Plink . . . . . . . FFWWWOOOOSH!_

As soon as Ralph phased hurriedly through the secret entrance between the crossed lollipops, a familiar sound told him that his hunch regarding Vanellope's whereabouts had indeed been correct. He paused briefly at the far end of the Diet Cola caves to catch his breath, having practically sprinted all the way from Masterwork, and the few short seconds of hesitation were enough to reignite the spark of anxiety in his thoughts that had been temporarily numbed by the physical preoccupation of the journey. An uneasy grimace twisted his features as he straightened up and made his way through the cave toward the center of the mountain, the continual repetition of the noise casting a nerve-wracking tension over the already uncomfortable situation.

With less confidence than a school-kid approaching the door to the principle's office, Ralph timidly peeked his nose around the corner and looked out into the glowing, cola-brown light of the volcano proper.

_Plink . . . . . . . FFWWWOOOOSH!_

Sure enough, the familiar sound echoing through the caverns was that of multiple geysers of boiling hot diet cola exploding thirty feet into the air every time one of the Mentos came falling from above, courtesy of Vanellope herself, who was repeatedly hurling small chunks of peanut-brittle rock at them and knocking them down. She was sitting on the very end of the unfinished cookie-wafer track high above the bubbling surface of the hot spring, her legs dangling over the edge and her gaze fixed blankly on the cap of Mentos stalactites. She wasn't so much as glancing down even once at the series of cola eruptions she was causing. Nearby, on a small landing close to the edge of the cola pool, her candy kart and the _Wreck-It Mobile _were parked side by side in their usual places.

_Plink . . . . . . . FFWWWOOOOSH!_

Ralph gulped reflexively.

He was almost too far away from her to clearly make out the expression that was darkening Vanellope's face, but even from where he stood half-hiding behind a cola-rock formation, he could see that his small friend was most definitely _not happy._

Ralph hesitated another few seconds, very briefly considering the idea of high-tailing it straight back out of Sugar Rush and postponing the confrontation for another day, maybe after Vanellope had had some time to cool down ( and _he'd _had more time to come up with a better excuse for inadvertently standing her up ) . . . . but he quickly thought better of it and heaved a reluctant, defeated sigh. _He'd have to face the music sooner or later . . . . might as well make it sooner. _He took another deep breath, then slowly padded his way over to the edge of the hot spring.

If Vanellope heard or saw him, she gave no sign of it. After standing there awkwardly for a moment, Ralph cleared his throat and gave her a small, guilty wave.

"Uh . . . h-hi, kid."

Vanellope paused with her arm pulled back in mid-throw. Slowly . . . _agonizingly _slowly . . . she turned her head and looked down at the spot where he was standing, and the moment her dull, half-lidded eyes fell on him, the squirming feeling in his stomach intensified. For a few seconds, she just stared at him in unforgiving silence . . . then, without saying a word, she looked back up at the ceiling and pitched the next rock as calmly as if she hadn't seen him at all.

_Plink, plink . . . . . . . _FFWWWA-_FWWOOOOSSH!_

This time, Vanellope threw so hard that not one, but two of the smooth white discs came tumbling down at once, and the resulting explosion sent splatters of scalding hot cola raining down all around him.

"Wha - !? What the . . . OW! _OUCH, SON OF A - !"_

Ralph cringed and sucked in a sharp breath as one of the splashes landed with a dull, frightening sizzle on the front of his overalls, and another hit him on the arm and immediately blistered a painful red burn into his skin. He scrambled back from the edge of the boiling pool, his breath heaving and his heart pounding . . . he clapped one hand over his searing cola burn and shot an incredulous glare up at the girl on the track.

"NOT FUNNY, Vanellope!" he roared, his voice resonating through the hollow mountain.

She didn't so much as glance at him. Ralph grit his teeth and forced the rising heat of his anger to issue out through another slow, steadying exhale, ordering himself to remain calm. He rubbed his eyes once with his hand and looked back up, carefully schooling his voice into an even tone.

"Vanellope . . . . listen," he began wearily, taking a few cautious steps back toward the hot spring. "I know you're mad at me . . . and you _deserve _to be . . . but please, you have to believe me, I didn't _mean _to miss our day today! It was all a big mistake, and I feel _terrible _about it, and . . . and . . . kid, would you please just come down here so I can talk to you?"

She didn't respond. She was emotionlessly tossing one of the rocks to herself and didn't even bat an eye in his direction.

Ralph felt the hot press of his temper fighting to resurface, made all the worse by the gnawing sensation of guilt that was creeping up simultaneously alongside it.

"_Please, _Vanellope? I'm trying to _apologize _to you here! Come on, the day's not totally over yet . . . I bet if we hurry, we can even still catch the tail end of the volleyball tournament over in Mall of the Dead! Whaddaya say, President Pipsqueak? . . . . _truce?"_

Ralph punctuated the end of his supplication with a hopeful smile, holding his hand up in Vanellope's direction. There was another moment of tense, baited silence . . . then . . .

_Plink . . . . . . . FFWWWOOOOSH!_

A frustrated growl worked its way involuntarily up out of Ralph's throat, and the last fraying cord of his patience abruptly snapped. He tossed both hands in the hair and spun on his heel, storming back towards the cave exit with his fists clenched, then pausing next to Vanellope's sponge-bed alcove and looking back, unable to keep the mounting volley of angry words shut inside any longer.

"You know what? _FINE!" _he snarled, his temper finally getting the better of him. "I run all the way here to tell you that I'm _sorry, _and you're too much of a brat to even _look at me? _You can just sit here by yourself, then! Pout as long as you want to, see if _I _care! I'm going _home!"_

Ralph whirled around and was about to stomp away again when a small voice, echoing faintly and far away high up in the cola chamber, made him stop.

"Not much fun, is it?"

He turned back, and the savage glower on his face softened slightly when he saw Vanellope standing up on the edge of the unfinished track, her arms folded and her eyes pointed toward him with a look that almost made him feel instantly ashamed of himself . . . but he shook it off quickly and lowered his brow again.

"What's not?" he muttered darkly.

There was a sudden blip of turquoise light and a scatter of vanishing pixels, and in the blink of an eye Vanellope glitched down from the top of the track and reappeared two feet in front of him, standing atop a small rock formation so that her face was only a few inches below his.

"Being _IGNORED!" _she answered in a shrill, infuriated cry that made him jump back in alarm.

"I . . . I wasn't ig_noring _you, Vanellope!" he countered defensively. "I just got . . . sidetracked, and I lost track of the time! I rushed over here as fast as I could the second I realized how late it was!"

Vanellope lowered her eyelids in an unconvinced sneer. "Oh, yeah. _Sure _you did."

"I _did! _I swear I did, you can even ask Mi - "

Ralph stopped dead with the name half hovering between his teeth, a halting knot suddenly wrenching inside of him along with an echoing sound byte of Mike's premonition . . .

_" . . . . if you miss your whole day with her, she's just going to blame __**me**__!"_

For a few seconds, he just stood there frozen with his mouth hanging open, but the look on Vanellope's face said clearly that she'd already known the truth even before he accidentally let it slip. Her eyes slowly narrowed into a scowl that was darker than any scowl he had ever seen on her before.

"Oh, yeah . . . that's right," Vanellope gritted lowly through her teeth, the deathly chill of her tone actually sending a tangible shiver down his back. "I'm sure _Mike _could vouch for you . . . since the two of you are never apart these days, even when _one_ of you makes a certain_ promise _to spend some time alone with certain somebody _else."_

Ralph quickly closed his mouth, a fresh pang of guilt stinging him even more painfully than the cola burn on his arm. He breathed an uncomfortable sigh and looked away, holding the back of his neck.

"Vanellope . . . listen . . . if you'll just give me a chance, I promise, I can _explain . . . . _okay, _yes, _I was with Mike today. I admit it. But I swear, I absolutely _meant _to meet you this morning, just like we planned! I just . . . there was this . . . well, it's kind of a long story_, _but . . . alright, so there's this tunnel in Mike's game, see, and she was determined to go into it, and I _tried _to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't listen, and I couldn't just let her go in there by herself, and then the next thing I know we're floating around in this stupid space-thing called the _Internet _and time is moving differently in there or something and then Mike goes and _collapses, _of all things,and by the time I _finally_ got her back into Masterwork the day was already half over, and I _. . . _I . . . . I'm _sorry, _Vanellope, okay? I'm _sorry!"_

Ralph uttered his final plea with a beseeching look down at his unimpressed-looking friend, acutely aware of how long-winded and pathetic his story actually sounded when spoken out loud. Vanellope just glared at him silently for a long, grating moment, and the knot of guilt inside him twisted tighter and tighter with every second that she didn't speak . . . but then, when she finally did, he immediately felt even worse.

"_You're a liar."_

Ralph blinked, the knot vanishing and replaced by a consuming hollowness that was twice as awful.

"Wh . . what? No, I'm not! Kid, I _promise _you, I'm te - "

"You're a _LIAR!" _Vanellope repeated, this time raising her voice to a savage scream and jabbing one finger accusingly up at his face. "You were _never _going to meet me! You were with _her, _all night long . . . even after you _told _me you were just going to walk her home! You can't _lie to me, _Ralph, I SAW YOU! I saw _both_ of you this morning!"

Ralph looked at her silently for a few seconds with his mouth open, his eyes narrowing into an incredulous glare of his own as the pieces suddenly fit together.

_He thought that he'd been awoken by a strange, faint noise from somewhere nearby . . . like a voice, talking to him from the other side of the wall, and then a muted rumbling sound, like . . ._

_. . . . like the engine of a go-kart._

"You . . . what do you mean, you _saw us?" _he demanded. "You were _spying on us?"_

"NO! Don't you _dare _try to turn this around and make _me _the bad guy!" Vanellope shouted furiously. "You made me a _promise, _Ralph, and real friends don't _break their promises, ESPECIALLY_ not for some stupid, sappy, _self-centered little . . . !" _

Vanellope trailed off into a speechless cringe, clenching her fists and glaring down at them as if she couldn't think of an insult bad enough to express her anger.

Ralph stood up straighter, his brow flattening with a look of grim understanding. _So . . . it was true. He didn't want it to be true . . . but he knew now, beyond a doubt, that it was._

"This isn't really about me missing our day . . . . is it, Vanellope?" he muttered darkly, and her glare gave a revealing flicker; " . . . this is about _Mike. _This is about _me _and Mike."

Vanellope went starkly quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, the sting of her searing anger was every bit as sharp as before . . . but the telltale quiver of another, very different emotion was now hidden underneath it.

"_How, _Ralph? How could you let her just . . . like it was _nothing, _like it didn't even matter . . . I . . . I _gave _you that sweater, Ralph. It was a special present, _just _for you . . . just _me _and _you, _and . . . and you just _let her wear it? _Like it didn't even _mean anything?"_

Ralph started, genuinely taken aback by this.

"_What? That's _what you're so upset about!? That I let Mike wear the _sweater you made for me? _What's wrong with that!? She wasn't _hurting _it! What . . . just because _you_ give me something, that means no one elseis allowed to even _touch it?_"

"_No, _that's not what I - "

"Then I don't understand! Why is that such a big deal?"

"It _wouldn't _be, if it was anyone e - "

"Then why are you so mad about it? _Why, _Vanellope!?"

"BECAUSE I _HATE HER!"_

Vanellope's scream echoed in the hollow chamber of the mountain. Ralph froze, the reply that was already forming on his lips dying before he could finish it. For a few seconds, he just stared at her in shock . . . but even before the last refrains of the echo had time to fade completely, she was already shouting again, her eyes flashing with unbridled rage and her cheeks growing slowly redder and redder.

"I _HATE HER, _RALPH! I hate her stupid glitch, I hate her stupid game, I hate her stupid _face! _I hate the way she talks to me, I hate the way she _hangs all over you, _I hate that you let her wear the _sweater __**I**__ made for you! _Ever since she showed up in the arcade, you've been acting like a complete _idiot, _and all you ever _talk about _anymore is _Mike _this, _Mike _that, _Mike _has a glitch, we all have to be nice to _Mike_ . . . I'm SICK OF IT! And . . . and you know what _else, _come to think of it?"

She paused for a moment to pin him with a seething, expectant glare, but when he didn't say anything, she went on again, now jumping down off of the rock formation and pacing around furiously in a small circle in front of him.

"Come to think of it, Ralph . . . . Mike doesn't even HAVE a glitch _at all! _She _can't!"_

"Wh . . . _what!?" _Ralph cried incredulously, breaking out of his horrified daze. "What are you talking about? Of _course _she has a glitch!"

"No, she DOESN'T! Stop and _think about it _for a minute_, _pea-brain! If Michelangela has a glitch, then _how can she still leave her game?"_

Ralph opened his mouth to answer, then stopped.

The realization of what Vanellope had said took a moment to fully sink in . . . but when it did, it hit him like a bolt of lightning and left him utterly speechless, because all at once, he understood that she was right. Vanellope was absolutely, inarguably, _right._

_Glitches __**can't leave their games**__. _

_How . . . how in the world had none of them remembered that before now?_

"You know what _I _think, Ralph?" Vanellope continued fiercely, taking advantage of his dumbstruck silence. "All this craziness that's been going on ever since Masterwork was plugged in . . . the SPs, the lockdown, the _quarantine . . . _I think _she's _the reason for it_. _I don't think your precious _Masterwork moron_ has anything wrong with her stupid code, _or _her stupid game at _all . . . _I think _she's a virus, _Ralph!"

Her last words pierced him like an arrow, biting deep inside and in one fell swoop, simultaneously killing any last trace of guilt or shock he had left and replacing it with blind, overwhelming anger. It was an anger more powerful than what had overtaken him after the DDR disaster, more venomous and spiteful than what he'd felt toward Johnny Cage. It was an anger so strong and horrible that if the person who'd caused it had been anyone . . . _literally anyone else in the world_ . . . standing there in front of him, he wouldn't have been able to stop himself from flattening them right then and there.

"Take . . . that . . . _back," _he growled through clenched teeth, so darkly that he almost frightened himself.

Vanellope's glare sharpened without the slightest hint of intimidation.

"No! _Mike is a __**virus**__, _Ralph, and if you weren't so brainwashed by all this _lovey-dovey _garbage, you'd be able to see it too! It all makes _sense _now _. . . _just_ think about it, _Ralph! When did the surge protectors go down? Right after Masterwork got plugged in!"

"_Shut up, _Vanellope!"

"So they put up a firewall, and what happens to it? It gets _fried, _at the exact same time _Mike _decides to come out of her game!"

"Shut UP!"

". . . and _what_ does she say whenever anybody starts asking her questions? She says she can't remember_, _because she just so happens to _conveniently _forget things because of a _glitch . . . _a glitch she can't _possibly _have!"

"I said SHUT _UP!" _

Ralph clenched his fists and roared in Vanellope's face so loudly that one of the Mentos fell from the end of its stalactite and sent another cola geyser bursting into the air with broiling _ffwwoooosh . . . _but he was reeling too lividly to even hear it, or to notice that Vanellope's scowl had abruptly vanished.

"So, that's what _you _think, huh? That's what the _brilliant little 'President' _thinks!" Ralph snarled sarcastically, intentionally pouring as much nastiness and rancor into his tone as he could muster. "Alright then, _genius . . . _you want to know what _I _think? _I _think, that you're nothing but a spoiled, selfish, MEAN little _brat _who's acting up because she doesn't want to admit that she's just _JEALOUS!"_

Vanellope's cheeks went a shade redder, and she sputtered indignantly for a moment before she could muster a half-hearted reply, the resolve of her voice rapidly failing.

"J . . . j-_jealous? _That's . . . that's _crazy! _W-why should I be _- "_

"Jealous because you're not the center of attention anymore . . . _jealous _because I actually have somebody to _care about _and spend time with besides YOU!"

He punctuated his last words with a vicious snarl and a sharp jab of his finger, and they finally did the trick. Vanellope's weakening glare broke down at last, and her angry frown began to tremble as her eyes suddenly became cloudy. Without another word, she spun around and climbed back up onto the cola rock, sitting down and hugging her knees to her chest with her back stubbornly turned to him so that he couldn't see the tears as they began streaming down her face.

But Ralph was too far gone in the throes of his rabid outburst to feel anything at the muted trembling of her suppressed cries except more bitterness and spite.

"Yeah, that's right . . . go ahead and _cry. _That's what you do when things don't go your way, isn't it . . . just _cry, _and I'm supposed to feel guilty and start apologizing, right? Well guess what_, _sister . . . NOT this time! _You're _the one who started pushing me into all this _'lovey-dovey garbage' _in the first place . . . . _you're _the one who talked me into looking for a girlfriend, _you're _the one who convinced me I should go into Mike's game to begin with, and _YOU'RE _the one who came up with the idea to show her around the arcade_ . . . . _and _now, _just when I'm starting to think that we might _really _have feelings for each other . . . . NOW, you've got the _nerve _to turn around and get _MAD AT ME FOR IT? _You just said that real friends don't break promises . . . well you know what else a _real friend _would do, Vanellope? A real friend would be _happy for me!"_

"Then maybe I'm NOT your real friend!" Vanellope screamed suddenly, jerking her head around to glare at him through tear-blurred eyes. "In fact, maybe I'm not your friend _AT ALL! _Maybe you just _leave _and go back to your precious _virus GIRLFRIEND, _since it's _obvious _you like her so much more than me _anyway!"_

"Oh, yeah? Alright then, maybe I _will!_ Maybe I DO like her better than you . . . and you know _why? _Because at least _Mike _wants me to be _happy . . . . _at least she cares about _me, _and not just _HERSELF!"_

"GET OUT!" Vanellope shrieked, the piercing hatred of her command broken up by a trail of sobs that she could no longer keep silent. "Get out of my game, and _never come back!"_

"Don't worry, your _highness . . ._ I _WON'T!" _

And without another word, so angry that he didn't look back even once - so angry that he couldn't even _see _straight - Ralph turned around and stormed out of the cave, straight back through the secret entrance, and straight on toward the distant exit of Sugar Rush, his mind already rigidly made up that he would never be setting foot in the game again . . . and that not even the smallest part of him cared.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The instant she was positive that Ralph was gone, Vanellope curled into a ball on top of the cola rock, buried her face in her hands, and cried until she couldn't cry anymore. When she finally lifted her red-eyed, tear-streaked face and looked miserably around her at the empty cave . . . the cave that, apart from her, would now _always _be empty, from that moment forward . . . she was out of breath and shaking from head to toe.

Then, her gaze fell upon the two candy karts parked side by side just a few yards away on a plateau near the edge of the cola hot spring. The sunlight beaming down through the cracks of the Mentos volcano cap shone through the translucent orange body of the _Wreck-It Mobile _and made it glow like a Christmas light.

Vanellope instantly saw red. A frenzy of rage the likes of which she had never experienced seized hold of her, and before she even knew what she was doing she was already jumping into the cockpit of her kart and revving the engine, wrenching the gearshift into reverse and zooming backwards down the ramp of the cola plateau, all the way to the far wall of the cave. Once there, she jerked the kart into drive, slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, and sped back toward the hot spring, gaining as much momentum as she possibly could before intentionally ramming her kart full force into the rear fender of the stationary _Wreck-It Mobile._

_KRRUUNCH!_

Vanellope slammed forward in her seat, almost knocking her teeth out on the edge of the steering wheel as the front bumper of her own kart cracked cleanly in half and the heavy, sturdy body of Ralph's kart gave a shuddering lurch forward. The peppermint-swirl wheels rolled slowly until they dropped over the edge of the plateau . . . then, the entire kart nose-dived and barreled straight down the short incline until it landed headlong in the pool of boiling cola with a sharp, sizzling splash.

Still bristling with near-incoherent fury, Vanellope climbed out of her kart and scrambled to the top of the plateau so she could watch the _Wreck-It Mobile _sink slowly deeper into bubbling spring, until finally the whole of the enormous rock-candy kart had melted away into nothing but a pool of orange syrup that quickly dissolved into the cola and then vanished completely.

For a few minutes more, with her chest heaving and her blurry eyes narrowed viciously at the surface of the spring, Vanellope just stood there and stared without really seeing anything. Then, sniffing loudly and smearing her sleeve across her face, she turned and slid back down to her own kart, which had been left running and was still popping and idling loudly as it waited for her return. Just as she was about to climb in, her eyes fell upon the teal and magenta words that were written in rock-hard frosting on the side.

Without hesitating, Vanellope raised one foot and savagely kicked her heel into the frosting signatures until they had crumbled away in sugary pieces on the ground . . . then she jumped into the kart, wiped her face once more, and sped away toward the cave exit.

Just after she had phased out between the sugar-free lollipops and was racing down the cocoa-dirt roads that would lead her back to the castle, Vanellope suddenly felt a surge of dizziness that was so strong it made her head spin and her insides go hollow. Her furious glare flickered and her face went pale, and after another second she felt so lightheaded that she had to slam her foot on the brakes and come to a halt on a hill near the junkyard.

Her kart engine rumbling impatiently, Vanellope paused and leaned forward in the seat with one hand over her eyes, breathing hard and confusedly waiting for the dizziness to go away. She noticed, with a small twinge of fright, that her brow had begun to perspire lightly underneath her hand.

For a moment longer, the sick feeling buzzed inside her head harder and harder until she was afraid she might actually faint . . . but then, in the blink of an eye, the dizziness vanished as quickly as it came, and all at once she was sitting up straight again and looking around perplexedly as the color returned to her cheeks. She sat there in her idling kart for a few seconds, puzzling over what had just happened . . . but soon, she was once more too overwhelmed with anger and hurt to give it any more thought, and before the tears had a chance to resurface, she pushed her foot down on the gas and resumed her fierce progress toward the castle.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Even by the time he had made his way out of Sugar Rush and was stomping back through the calm, Sunday afternoon atmosphere of Game Central Station, Ralph was still so livid that he scarcely even glanced up to see where he was going, glaring down at the ground in front of him and muttering to himself as he let his feet follow the familiar route to Fix-It Felix Jr. of their own accord. Because of this, he didn't see the hulking, armored shapes of the two characters running toward him until they had both plowed straight into him and knocked him flat on the floor.

Already in an enraged state to begin with, Ralph shook himself and sat up with a vicious growl, practically ready to pummel whoever had run into him without asking a single question . . . but when he saw who they were, his savage glare lifted slightly with a glimmer of curiosity.

The two disoriented figures scrambling heavily back to their feet in front of him were none other than Markowski and Janowitz, two soldiers he recognized from Calhoun's platoon. They were dressed in full battle gear with the orange visors of their helmets flipped open, and judging by the frantic looks on their faces, they both had somewhere they desperately needed to be.

"Hey . . . what gives, you guys?" Ralph demanded irately, clambering back to his feet and dusting off the front of his overalls. "Where's the fire?"

"Wreck-It!" Markowski exclaimed in surprise when he looked up. "Sorry, _pal_, no time to explain . . . we've gotta get back to Hero's Duty _pronto!"_

His curiosity piqued, Ralph momentarily let the rage and hurt from his fight with Vanellope slip to the back of his mind and took off after Markowski and Janowitz as they booked furiously across the station toward their game gate.

"Wait, hold on a second!" Ralph puffed breathlessly as he ran alongside them, struggling to keep up. "Why, what's happening in Hero's Duty?"

_"Classified!" _Markowski snapped back . . . but even as he said it, Janowitz rolled his eyes and turned to Ralph with a meaningful glance.

"Come on, 'Kowski, he's got a right to know! They're _his _friends, too!"

"What? _What's happening?" _Ralph cried, growing more anxious by the second. The three of them reached the Hero's Duty portal and ran inside without giving security a chance to question them.

"It's a _code Romeo," _Janowitz explained as the doors to the shuttle-train closed behind them and Ralph doubled over to catch his breath. "Or in civilian terms, a _rogue in-game character. _'Kowski and I both fell asleep in Tapper's last night, and we didn't pick up on the signal call until a few minutes ago . . . Kohut's calling all personnel back into the game to try and contain the rogue so she doesn't get out and go anywhere she can cause any _real damage."_

Ralph's ears perked up, a sharp pang of dread shooting through him and making him jerk his head back up.

"Did you say . . . _she?"_

Janowitz exchanged a grim look with Markowski, then nodded.

"Afraid so, Wreck-It. It's the _Sergeant. _Something's wrong with her, and nobody knows what . . . but according to Kohut's transmission, she's been running amok through the barracks since early this morning, and they haven't been able to stop her or calm her down. It . . . it sounds like there's some kind of disruption in her code."

Ralph's eyes widened in horror as a dozen fearful thoughts and snatches of memory all began screaming in his head at once.

_Calhoun going pale and collapsing in Street Fighter . . . . the surge protectors all mysteriously going down . . . . disruption in her code . . . . _

_"It's a virus," Calhoun herself had gritted through her teeth on the night that all the craziness began; "This arcade isn't just in lockdown. We're in __**quarantine**__."_

_"It all makes sense now . . . just __**think about it**__, Ralph!"_

_". . . you! You saved my life!" Mike had cried . . . and, before Calhoun could stop her, lunged at her and gripped the sergeant in a vice-like hug . . . ._

_"When did all of this start to happen? Right after Masterwork was plugged in!"_

_"It's just . . . something doesn't feel right," Mike had admitted quietly, on the night they first met; " . . . it's like . . . there's some kind of __**wall **__around me . . . something holding me, slowing me down, keeping me back . . . "_

"Oh . . . and another thing," Janowitz added suddenly, just as the shuttle came to a halt at the Hero's Duty docking station and the doors opened with an automated _whoosh. _"Her husband is here, too."

"What? _Felix?" _Ralph sputtered incredulously as the three of them went charging down the deserted metal hallway and around a corner that would lead them deeper into the bowels of the barracks. "Why is he still here? If anything happens to him in this game, he's _dead!"_

"Listen, Wreck-It, we've told you all we know!" Markowski snapped. " . . . and for that matter, why are _you _here? Anything happens to you, you're just as dead as _he is!"_

Ralph blinked in alarm and almost tripped as he followed the two soldiers down a sharp, narrow flight of iron stairs. That point hadn't occurred to him.

"Well . . . I just need to make sure Calhoun's going to be _alright_ . . . then I'll grab Felix and get us both out of here."

"Good luck, pal," Janowitz muttered, pausing to check something on his wrist communicator as they came to a halt near a huge, bolted circular door in the middle of the hallway. "From the sounds of it, Kohut and the rest of the squad _combined_ couldn't force him out of here . . . not while his wife was in danger."

Ralph started again. "But . . . this is her game! Why would Calhoun be in danger?"

"Because, _Wreck-It . . . " _Markowski growled darkly. " . . . if something really is disrupting her code, that means there's a chance her regeneration programming _won't work _if something happens to her."

Ralph felt himself go pale as a cold shudder rippled through him. "You . . . you mean . . . she could really . . . ?"

Markowski narrowed his brow seriously, but didn't say anything else.

Meanwhile, Janowitz was prodding at the buttons of his wrist communicator and squinting down at it with a perplexed frown.

"This doesn't make any sense," he muttered. He raised his head and checked a glowing, digital sign that was set into the wall nearby. "Level B1, unit C . . . according to my locator, Kohut and the others _should _be right on top of us . . . but I don't see anybody!"

Ralph and Markowski looked up and down the narrow, dimly lit hallway - save for themselves, it was empty.

Markowski made a face and scratched his forehead through the opening of his visor.

"Maybe your talkie's on the blink. Let me check mine and see if - "

BBAAMM!

A deafening, metallic crash sounded from the other side of the circular door beside them, silencing Markowski and echoing through the iron corridor.

BBAAMM! BBAAMM!

The three of them exchanged quick, panicked glances, but before any of them could move or speak, a fourth blow finally ruptured the heavy lock into fragments of twisted metal.

_BBAAMM!_

The door came flying open, sending Ralph and the two soldiers stumbling back in alarm.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Her chest heaving frantically and her exhausted arms just barely able to maintain their hold on the thirty-pound plasma rifle - which was the only thing she'd been able to carry from the armory, and which she'd just used to break down the door leading into the central corridor of unit C - Calhoun blinked away another in an unending series of dizzy swoons swimming behind her eyes and looked up.

On the other side of the now-open door, three gigantic, hovering cybugs blinked back at her.

Calhoun's eyes shot wide open, and with a ragged scream that was as much frustration and rage as it was fear, she hoisted the plasma rifle up onto her shoulder and fired . . . but she was weak and disoriented from hours of constant running and fighting. As it was, she couldn't manage to keep the gun steady or her aim straight, even at point-blank range. The green plasma shot sliced the air inches above the first cybug's shell and sizzled harmlessly into the metal wall behind them. She growled and pulled the trigger again, but an empty _chink, chink _sound told her that she was, once again, out of ammo.

Before the bugs had a chance to attack, Calhoun summoned all the strength she had left into her upper body and launched the heavy rifle at one of them, hitting it square between its glowing eyes and making it reel back into the wall, shrieking furiously. While the other bugs were distracted, she wrenched out the knife she had been carrying in the elastic of her underwear, leapt through the circular doorway, and sprinted down the C-unit hallway without looking back.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The only thing Ralph had been able to catch a glimpse of before Calhoun had opened fire on him, Markowski, and Janowitz, were her eyes - glowing in their sockets with an eerie blue light that made her look even more crazed and wild than she would have anyway running armed and barefoot through the barracks in nothing but her underpants - and then, the next thing he knew, something hard and heavy came flying towards his face and hit him with enough force to send him stumbling backward into the wall. A flash of staggering pain blazed between his eyes, and by the time Janowitz and Markowski had recovered from the shock long enough to help him back up to his feet, Calhoun was gone, and the sound of at least a half dozen pairs of footsteps was thundering rapidly toward them down the hall from the direction she had just come.

Ralph looked up, his head still throbbing, and was only momentarily shocked to see Felix, Kohut, and five other Hero's Duty soldiers staring back at them.

"Felix!" he blurted out reflexively.

_"Ralph!?" _his flustered and frantic-looking protagonist blurted back, his eyes wide and his hammer clutched rigidly in his hand. Felix was dressed in nothing but a pair of long, blue pajama pants, his hair mussed and beads of sweat rolling down his temples. "Ralph, wha . . . what are _you doing here?"_

"Markowski, Janowitz!" Kohut barked furiously before Ralph could answer. "Where the _bits _have you two been!?"

Janowitz opened his mouth anxiously to reply, but the towering, glaring second-in-command quickly silenced him again.

"Never mind, we don't have time for that! Which way did the Sergeant go?"

Janowitz and Markowski both shot their arms straight out down the hallway to the right, and Kohut signaled to the group of soldiers behind him.

"She's headed for ground level! Everybody, let's _move, move, MOVE!"_

Kohut and the rest of the soldiers took off charging in single-file down the narrow hallway, and Ralph and Felix were caught up running in the middle of the formation. As they went, Felix repeatedly shot anxious, reprimanding looks over his shoulder at Ralph, shouting incriminations at him as loudly as his fatigue and gasping would allow.

"I . . . I don't know _why _you're here, Ralph, but you . . . you've _got _to get out of here, this _minute!"_

_"Me? _What about _you?" _Ralph shot back incredulously as the charging platoon rounded a sharp corner and came to a wider stretch of hallway.

"I _have _to stay, Ralph! She's my WIFE, I'm _not _going to abandon her to . . . to whatever's causing this!"

Ralph felt a sharp pang as the word _virus _flashed once more in his subconscious.

"Wh-what . . . what do you think _is _causing it?" he asked breathlessly, almost afraid to hear the answer. "Why is she doing this . . . what's wrong with her _eyes?"_

"We don't know," Felix answered shortly, clearly struggling to mask the pain and anxiety evident in his tone. "She woke up this morning and just started _hallucinating . . . _as near as we can figure, she's got some sort of _tear _or _slip_ in her code that's making her think she's under attack . . . she's been running from us all day, and we've just been trying to keep her from leaving the game or _hurting _herself . . . . I'm afraid all we can do is try to keep up until she's too tired to run anymore!"

_"Wrong, _Fix-It!" Kohut, who was running just a few paces ahead of them, snapped suddenly and shot a grave look back at them. "The sarge isn't going to _get _tired . . . not before she's made it to her next objective."

The way he said it sent another chill of dread down Ralph's spine, and Felix's worried eyes widened even further.

"Why? What's her next - !?"

"She's leading us toward the _ground level!" _Kohut shouted as he and the rest of the group went hurrying up another narrow staircase. "That means there are only two places she can be headed next . . . she's either going to make a break for Game Central Station, or . . . "

"Or WHAT?" Felix demanded frantically.

" . . . or . . . she's going out onto the surface of the planet."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Calhoun's bare feet slapped loudly and almost painfully on the metal floor beneath her as she ran for all she was worth toward the fork in the ground-level hallway. To the right was the game entrance loading dock, to the left was the airlock that would open out onto the planet's surface. Her heart was thudding in her chest so hard she felt as if it might give out at any moment, but she refused to give in to it now . . . Calhoun grit her teeth and ran through the pain as she reeled around the corner to the left and continued on toward the airlock doors.

Not far behind her, she could hear the droning hum of the swarm of cybugs that had chased her relentlessly throughout the barracks for hours. She tightened her grip defensively on the knife in her right hand and narrowed her eyes in front of her.

_No other way . . . have to draw them outside the base . . . have to trigger the beacon . . . have to destroy them before they find their way out of the game . . ._

"We are humanity's last hope!" As she ran, Calhoun opened her mouth and began breathlessly shouting the command that would activate the airlock doors. "Our mission, destroy all cybugs! You ready rookie, LET'S FIND OUT!"

She gasped out the final words just as she was reaching the end of the corridor, and the enormous metal doors in front of her opened just in time. Without hesitating, she leapt over the threshold and out into the cold, foul-smelling air of the craggy alien planet, flecks of ash and drifts of smoke blowing past her as she tore down the ramp and onto the road that lead toward the distant, looming peak of the tower.

Just as she reached the foot of the ramp, Calhoun heard a sharp, metallic hum and a grating shriek behind her, and she jerked her head back to glare venomously at the first pair of cybugs following her out of the airlock opening.

_That's right, you monsters . . . follow the leader . . . ._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As soon as Kohut had finished his grave prediction, Felix took off with a burst of renewed speed and energy that sent him zooming to the front of the pack, eclipsing the soldiers and moving on several lengths ahead of them. It was as much as Ralph could do to keep up with him at all, but after a minute of clenching his teeth and pushing his screaming leg muscles as hard as he possibly could before they gave out, he too passed by the other soldiers and came up close behind his protagonist's heels. They rounded the corner leading toward the airlock, just in time to see Calhoun already running through its open doors onto the planet surface.

"TAMMY! _WAIT!"_

Calhoun looked back once at the desperate sound of her husband's voice, but only sharpened her determined glare and kept running toward the tower, the blade of her knife flashing in the overcast gray light of the barren alien world.

"She's headed for the tower!" one of the soldiers shouted from somewhere close behind him.

_"Come on, _men! We have to stop her before she gets there!" Kohut ordered, a hint of fear betraying his iron-clad tone. "If she wakes up any of the cybugs, if they get her while her _code is disrupted . . . "_

He didn't finish the thought.

Felix began to stumble and lilt as he ran a few paces ahead of Ralph, the exhaustion and panic finally starting to overtake him. Ralph looked anxiously up at Calhoun's shrinking back, growing steadily smaller and smaller up ahead of them.

"It's no use!" he gasped helplessly. "We're never going to catch her, she's too fast!"

No sooner had he spoken than Felix suddenly gave a startled half-trip and jerked his head up, his eyes flashing as an idea visibly struck him. Without slowing down for an instant, he jammed his hammer into a loop on his waistband, craned his neck to look back at Ralph and shouted two frantic words . . .

"THROW ME!"

Ralph jerked in alarm and had to mentally order himself to keep running.

"_What!?"_

"Just _do it, _Ralph! _THROW ME AT HER!"_

Not daring to hesitate or question him further, Ralph obediently scooped Felix up into one hand, lifted him high above his head, and . . . like a quarterback throwing a hundred yard pass . . . launched his protagonist into the air as hard as he could, stumbling forward and falling flat on his face from the reeling momentum of the motion. Felix sailed up in a curving arc across the dark sky, hurtling straight towards the retreating figure of his wife.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Calhoun had almost reached the end of the bridge and was coming up on the main entrance to the laboratory when she suddenly picked up the sound of whirring gears and metallic wings, growing louder and sharper by the second. Her heart leapt fearfully into her mouth, and she looked over her shoulder just in time to see a cybug zooming through the air straight toward her at top speed.

She opened her mouth to scream, but her voice was cut off as the shrieking projectile creature crashed into her and knocked her to the ground, the two of them rolling together in a painful jumble of limbs and segmented, robotic insect parts until they finally came to a stop just a few yards away from the foot of the tower.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph was on his feet again in seconds, he and the rest of the Hero's Duty soldiers all running frantically toward the end of the bridge where Felix and Calhoun had fallen together in a tangled heap. As they drew near, Ralph let out a hollow gasp of horror and forced himself to move even faster.

Calhoun had bucked Felix off of her shoulders and now had him pinned on his back against the ground, crouching over him and struggling to push the blade of the knife in her hand down towards his chest. Felix had one hand pushing on her shoulder and the other gripped around her wrist, his taught, trembling arm the only thing keeping the knife from sinking down into his heart . . . but Calhoun was slowly overpowering him, the tip of the blade inching closer and closer towards its target.

"Calhoun . . . _STOP!"_

Ralph cried out to her, and she jerked her head up in surprise just as he came barreling up to her and knocked her off of Felix with one pendulum-like swing of his fist. The knife went flying out of her hand, and the instant she was on her back, Kohut and two other soldiers had her pinned to the ground, holding down her arms and legs as she snarled and thrashed futilely against them.

The second he was sure Calhoun was safely subdued, Ralph dropped to his knees over his stunned protagonist.

"Felix! _Felix! _Felix, buddy, are you okay!?"

Felix was lying motionlessly on his back, his hands hovering above him as if still fighting off an imaginary attacker. His chest was heaving and his eyes were wide with shock, his face deathly pale. After a few seconds of dazed silence, he shook himself and rolled to one side, rising tremblingly to one knee.

"Y-yes . . . . yes, I . . . I'm fine, Ralph . . . "

"Take it easy! Let me help you!" Ralph held out his hands worriedly, but Felix swatted them away and began tossing his head around desperately.

"W-where is she? Where's . . . _Tammy!" _he cried out his wife's name and bolted straight toward her when he saw her lying pinned a few feet away. He pushed his way past the soldiers restraining her and dropped to his knees beside her, lifting her head into his lap. Ralph took a few shaking steps toward them and looked down.

Calhoun had stopped struggling, and her eyes were squeezed shut and her teeth bared, as if she were expecting to be torn to pieces any second and was just waiting for it to be over with. Janowitz had taken up Kohut's position holding down her right arm, and Kohut was tapping her ever so gently on the temple with two fingers.

"Sergeant," he said firmly, leaning closer over her with an anxious look at her pained expression. _"Sergeant! _It's _me, _Kohut! It's not real, sarge . . . whatever you're seeing, it's just a hallucination! Please, try to wake up! _Sergeant!"_

Calhoun made no response. His hand trembling so badly he could barely keep his grip, Felix took the hammer from its loop on his waistband and delivered a gentle tap to his wife's forehead. The hammer _blinged, _and there was a quick flash of golden light, but then . . . nothing. Calhoun only squeezed her eyes shut tighter and cringed. Kohut shook his head sadly, then signaled to one of the soldiers standing beside Ralph, who nodded in grim obedience and took something out of a small medical case that was attached to his belt. Kohut and the other soldiers holding her down shuffled aside to make way for him, and as he knelt down beside Calhoun Ralph saw that the instrument he was prepping in one hand was a syringe.

Felix's eyes bugged with horror.

"What is that? What are you doing to her!?"

"Calm down, Fix-It," Kohut urged, putting one hand on Felix's chest and gently pushing him away. "There's no other way. It's just a code-sedative . . . it'll slow her down and put her all her programming functions into sleep mode, just until we can figure out what's going on."

Felix looked as if he fiercely wanted to protest, but instead he kept his mouth shut and turned away dismally. He rose shakily to his feet and began pacing back and forth, keeping his face turned pointedly away while the medic soldier was administering the sedative to his wife. Ralph winced and turned his own gaze aside just as the needle was sliding silently into her underarm. Not knowing what else to do, he moved over to his frazzled, anxious protagonist to try and comfort him.

"It's . . . it's gonna be okay, Felix. These guys know what they're - Felix? _Felix?"_

As Ralph was talking to him, Felix suddenly stopped pacing and froze, his face going blank and empty and, if possible, even paler than before. Ralph watched in horror for a split-second as he swayed dizzily on his feet, then darted forward and caught him in the palm of his hand as he suddenly fell over backwards. Kohut jerked his head up and narrowed his eyes in alarm.

"What? What's wrong with _him, _now?"

"I don't know, he . . . he just collapsed!" Ralph stammered hollowly, carefully holding up the limp figure of his protagonist in both hands and turning his small face up into the dim, overcast light. "Felix, _what is it? What's wrong?"_

His eyelids fluttering and his hair sticking to his perspiring forehead, Felix muttered something incoherent beneath his breath and tried to sit up, but immediately fell back down in another swoon.

"He's probably just giving out from exhaustion," Kohut muttered. "You better get him out of here and back to your own game."

There was nothing Ralph wanted to do more at the moment, but he was torn with a sharp wrench of worry and hesitation when his gaze fell once more on Calhoun, whose eyes were now closed in peaceful unconsciousness as she was lifted gently up into the arms of her second-in-command.

"But what about her?" he pleaded. "Are you _sure _she's going to be alright now? Felix would never want to leave her after what just happened!"

"_Felix _isn't going to be any good to _anyone _until he can get back to his game and get his _own_ strength back," Kohut countered in a no-nonsense tone. " . . . and even if he _did_ stay here, there's nothing he can do for his wife now except to let us take care of her. The arcade is opening tomorrow morning, and we're _all _going to be in deep trouble if _either _of the Fix-Its aren't up and ready for gameplay . . . so the best thing now is for the two of youto go home, and let _us _deal with things here."

Ralph cast an uneasy glance toward Markowski and the other soldiers, but they all just nodded somberly in agreement. He looked down at Felix, who was still just barely clinging to consciousness and unable to form coherent words . . . and he knew, as wrong and troubling as it still seemed to him, that the others were right. He had to get his protagonist back to Fix-It Felix Jr.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

There was a small riot of panic on the front stoop of the apartment building when Gene, Mary, and a handful of the other Nicelanders answered the knock on the door to find Ralph standing there with a half-dressed, unconscious Felix cradled in the crook of his arm . . . but after a few minutes of carefully worded explanation, he managed to calm them down enough for two of them to take their protagonist from him and carry him carefully up to his small superintendent's apartment. Ralph would have preferred to carry him there himself, but he was too big to fit through the doorways of any of the apartments in the building other than the penthouse, and after the day he'd had, he doubted that he was in the best state of mind to try and deal tactfully with getting stuck in a fifth-floor hallway. He would also have preferred taking Felix to his and Calhoun's brownstone on the main street, but he knew from experience that they kept it locked when neither of them were there.

All in all, it was a good ten minutes of nerve-wracking altercation before the front door of the apartment building finally closed again, with Felix safely inside and Ralph once more alone in the silent nighttime of the game. He heaved a long, exhausted sigh and trudged wearily back to the dump, his knuckles almost dragging through the grass. He didn't enter his brick shack immediately, but rather sat down on the front step and let himself lean back against the door, which creaked under his weight.

Feeling more tired and worn out than he could remember ever feeling before in his life, Ralph let his gaze wander up to the peaceful, starry sky of Fix-It Felix Jr., and before his thoughts could even begin to touch back on the long list of awful things that had transpired in the past twenty-four hours, he had fallen into a restless, fitful sleep right there on the front stoop of his house.


	35. Chapter 34: Out of Order

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 34: Out of Order_

A small, unexpected yawn suddenly rose up Mike's throat and broke her concentration, making her lower her brush from the huge canvas in front of her and take a step back. She had gone upstairs and begun painting almost as soon as Ralph had left the day before, primarily as a means by which to calm herself down and attempt to sort through the innumerable questions and confusion buzzing through her mind regarding their trip to the Internet . . . but the effort proved fruitless, and she quickly gave up on trying to unravel any part of the mystery for the time being and simply let herself sink into the peaceful distraction of painting. She became so engrossed in the work that she didn't even notice when the day ended and night fell . . . and now, as she backed away to take assessment of her progress for the first time in hours, she was alarmed to see that it was already morning, and beams of golden sunlight were streaming through the windows of her studio.

Indeed . . . not only was it already morning, but a sudden, familiar sound of keys jangling against distant glass told her that Litwak had just arrived, and that the arcade would be opening within minutes.

Mike's heart leapt into her mouth, and she immediately threw down her messy brush and palette - ignoring the colorful splatters they added to the already hopelessly paint-stained rug beneath her feet - and hastily grabbed one edge of the easel and canvas, spinning them around so that the picture faced away from the game screen in the wall and she could hide behind it as Litwak passed by. She waited until the sound of his footsteps faded into the far corner of the arcade near his office door, then breathed a low sigh of relief. It wouldn't have done for him to catch sight of her attempts to paint the Internet from memory . . . or for him to see her looking so out-of-character, for that matter. She had taken her smock off and braided her hair down her back, and her arms were covered in more dried paint than was kosher for normal gameplay.

_Stupid me, losing track of so much time, _Mike grumbled wordlessly to herself as she quickly tidied her studio a bit, scrubbed her forearms reasonably clean with a rag, put on a fresh smock and shook her hair out, jumping up to assume her position at the game screen just as Litwak was flipping on the lights and opening the front doors at nine a.m. precisely.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph had been so exhausted and had slept so poorly through the night ( his dreams were repeatedly invaded by things like pairs of blue eyes glowing in the faces of his friends, Calhoun shouting incoherent nonsense to him in her underpants, Vanellope setting fire to dozens of forest green sweaters, and a miniature-sized King Candybug virus attaching itself to Mike's head while she screamed ) that he might not have woken up at all on Monday morning if it weren't for someone grabbing him by the arm and shaking him violently until his eyes popped open.

Still slouched on the front stoop of his house where he'd fallen asleep hours before, Ralph grunted sharply and jerked awake all at once, blinking repeatedly and sitting bolt upright.

"Hnuh . . . hwuh? Wha, I'm awake, I'm _awake!"_ he muttered groggily, then looked down to see who had shaken him. In spite of the lingering disorientation of bad sleep and troubling dreams that hadn't quite faded, Ralph immediately narrowed his eyes in a suspicious frown when he saw Gene standing on the grass in front of his stoop . . . but the frown straightened as soon as he opened his mouth.

"We've got a problem, Ralph," the squat, mustachioed Nicelander said bluntly . . . and from the grave, frightened tone of his voice, it was clear that he wasn't joking.

Ralph squinted anxiously as he rolled to his feet, and Gene tilted his head back to follow his gaze as the larger man towered over him.

"Why, what's going on? We don't have a quarter alert al_ready, _do we? It can't be past ni - "

"No, it's not that," Gene cut him off. "This is serious, Ralph. It's . . . it's Felix. Something's wrong with him."

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Yo, Litwak!"

The arcade hadn't been open for a full twenty minutes before the sound of a teenaged girl's voice rang out his name from across the room, breaking the tranquility of what he'd hoped would be a quiet and uneventful Monday morning. Litwak glanced up in the direction the voice had come from and saw the young lady frowning and waving him over to the Hero's Duty console. He paused for a moment behind the prize counter and sighed, rubbing his eyes with his hands before grudgingly setting off toward the game, already knowing what he'd find before he even got there. The girl had said his name in the same familiar tone he'd heard far too many hundreds of times before not to recognize now . . . it was the tone that - no matter what words the person actually said - always meant, _this game is broken, give me a refund._

"Alright . . . what's the trouble, little lady?" Litwak asked with another small sigh, trying his best to sound polite.

The red-haired teenager popped her gum loudly and gestured to the large Hero's Duty game screen with the nose of the plastic gun controller.

"Game won't load," she muttered, her glazed eyes staring at him expectantly.

Litwak turned to inspect the game, and stifled a groan when he saw that it was, once again, stuck on the opening cut screen and wouldn't continue on to gameplay. Unlike the similar malfunction a few days previous, however, this time the blonde sergeant character was present, but seemed to be stuck in some kind of irregular motion loop. She kept lifting her head and scanning her eyes around, her teeth clenching and unclenching in an anxious, almost panicked expression. If he hadn't known better, Litwak would have thought she seemed to be trying to look beyond the edge of the playing screen. Evidently, the game's sound system had also gone haywire . . . on top of the normal, heavily pounding cut-scene music, random sound bytes of voices and explosions were repeatedly blasting from the background.

"Darn this thing!"Litwak grumbled, straightening up and dispensing eight quarters from his belt. "Second time in a _week_ it's frozen up like this. Must be time to have it hauled out for maintenance, or something . . . . here's a full refund for you. Sorry about that, miss."

The girl took the quarters, popped her gum again, and sauntered away without another word. Litwak gave one last frustrated glance at the stalled-out game screen, then ambled across the arcade and into his office to photocopy a fresh batch of _Out-of-Order _signs.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The second that the gamer and Litwak had both gone away and there was no one else looking at the Hero's Duty game screen, Calhoun immediately darted around the first-person-shooter-bot standing in front of her and jumped headlong into the riotous melee that was unfolding in the air-lock chamber and which she'd been forced to watch helplessly for almost five minutes while the player was standing there, waiting for a game that she now couldn't begin.

The commotion was being caused by two members of her platoon who, just seconds before Calhoun was about to say her line and open the air-lock doors, had suddenly - for no conceivable reason - gone totally ballistic, screaming and knocking into everyone around them and firing their weapons into the air, the blasts ricocheting off the metal walls of the enclosed chamber and stirring the rest of the contingent into a flabbergasted panic. Kohut and the others had been trying their best to subdue the malfunctioning soldiers, but it wasn't until Calhoun tackled one of them in the back of the knees and made him drop his weapon that the plasma blasts stopped flying long enough for them to be successfully pinned down.

As soon as the two inexplicably crazed soldiers were safely restrained, Calhoun rose breathlessly to her feet and pulled off her helmet, holding her face with her hand and willing the dizzy tremors to dissipate from her body. She turned her back to the platoon to try and hide her paleness and fatigue, but Kohut noticed her immediately.

"I _knew _it!" he growled. "I knew you were still too weak to be doing this . . . Sarge, you _have _to give yourself more time to recover! We still don't know what it was that disrupted your code yesterday, and until we - "

"That's _enough!" _Calhoun interrupted him fiercely, spinning on her heel to face him and the rest of the platoon, who were all staring at her in marked silence save for the two who were still being held down against the floor. "The next one of you who says anything about my _code disruption _is gonna get a boot in the teeth! Forget about _me,_ and start figuring out what the _bits _just happened here . . . thanks to _these_ two, we're about to be put out of order . . . _again! _Who are they, and what in holy hop-along just _got into them!?"_

The two soldiers restrained on the floor had stopped thrashing futilely against the armored hands that held them down, but they were each muttering and babbling incoherently to themselves, apparently too terrified to form full sentences. Kohut leaned over and flipped up the breath-clouded orange visors of their helmets to reveal their faces, their eyes glowing bright blue in their sockets . . . and when everyone saw who they were, a murmur of confusion rippled through the room.

"It's . . . Janowitz and Markowski!" Kohut exclaimed, then shot a questioning look back at Calhoun, who was staring at the incapacitated soldiers with a pale, unreadable expression. "They're . . . they're acting almost the same way as _you_ were, when you . . . you . . . "

Her second-in-command trailed off, and Calhoun felt a rending pang deep inside of her that almost buckled her already weak knees. It took her several seconds to realize that the sick feeling gradually overtaking her was not just a residual of the harrowing ordeal she'd been through the day before, but also something else to which she was not at all accustomed . . . . it was _fear._

Kohut and the rest of her platoon just stared at her expectantly, pleadingly . . . and for the first time in her career, Calhoun had absolutely no idea what order to give them.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It was fortunate that Litwak decided to run off a complete restock of _Out-of-Order_ signs when he did, because no sooner had he taped one of them over the screen of Hero's Duty than he heard his name being called out yet again, this time from the back wall of the arcade.

"Hey, Mr. Litwak?"

"Yes . . . what is it?" he puffed, the stack of orange papers still clutched in one arm as he hurried over to the small boy standing in front of the Street Fighter II cabinet and looking thoroughly confused. He pointed to the game screen, and Litwak leaned over to look.

"I think something's wrong with the game," the boy muttered disappointedly.

On the Street Fighter II screen, Cammy and Zangief were standing in their respective places on the stage as if preparing to fight . . . and at first glance, nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. Then, Litwak tested the joystick and buttons. Cammy, the NPC of the round, waited properly in place on the left side of the stage . . . but Zangief, instead of responding to the controls as he ought to, suddenly began jumping back and forth in short, jerky motions, aimlessly kicking and punching the air. Litwak stopped pressing the button and watched, dumbfounded, as Zangief's unprompted attacks became wilder and more erratic, until finally the Russian character had dropped to his knees and was just slamming his elbows over and over into the ground.

"Oh, _boy!" _Litwak grumbled exasperatedly to himself, handing a refund quarter to the boy and pulling out another _Out-of-Order _sign for the broken fighting game. "_Two_ in one morning? When it rains, it pours. This is shaping up to be one rotten Monday."

However, before Litwak could even finish taping the orange sign to the Street Fighter screen, he suddenly heard _another _voice . . . and then another, and another, and _another, _calling out to him in a scattered chorus from every corner of the arcade.

"Mr. Litwak, Mall of the Dead is broken. My guy won't stop running into the wall."

"Mr. Litwak, Virtua Fighter isn't working!"

"Mortal Kombat's busted too . . . look, Johnny Cage won't kick when I hit the button."

"Mr. Litwak, come over here! Something's wrong with Sugar Rush."

"Tapper is broken, too!"

"Mr. Litwak!"

"Mr. _Litwak!"_

Litwak slumped his shoulders in disbelief and held his forehead with one hand, looking around slowly at the room full of increasingly noisy and confused children who kept clamoring out for his help as game after game after game seemed to go out of commission before his eyes.

It was like some kind of bad dream.

After a moment of stunned frustration, Litwak shook himself and set off anxiously towards the closest malfunctioning game.

"Okay, _okay, _everybody just relax!" he raised his voice over the chorus of indignant babble and shouting and held up his hands for quiet, a gesture which most of the children ignored. "One at a time, please, _one at a time! _If you'll all just be _patient, _I promise I'll get around to _every broken game _and make sure everyone gets a refund_ . . . . _please, everybody just calm down!_"_

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Everybody, _please . . . _just _CALM DOWN!" _Felix begged for umpteenth time . . . but his plea had no effect on the Nicelanders, who kept pacing back and forth in panicked circles around the grass and jabbering almost incoherently to each other, just as they had been doing for over half an hour. Even Ralph found himself struggling not to lose his head completely for a moment as he bugged his eyes disbelievingly down at the incapacitated handyman.

"Calm down? _Calm down?_ That's all you have to say, is _calm down!?" _he sputtered, gesturing incredulously to his protagonist with both hands. "Felix . . . _look at you!"_

Felix sighed thickly and rubbed one palm on his forehead, momentarily obscuring the electric blue light that was glowing out from the whites of his eyes, exactly the way Calhoun's had the night before.

"Listen_, _Ralph, I know it seems bad . . . but just think about what poor _Tammy_ had to go through yesterday! If this really is some kind of code bug I caught from her, then I'd say we're awfully lucky it isn't a lot _worse."_

Ralph furrowed his brow dubiously and took another wincing look at him. Felix was sitting down on one of the pieces of patio furniture arranged in the backyard area behind the apartment building, safely hidden from the view of the players' screen. The chair in which he was sitting was repeatedly changing size, going from smaller to larger, then larger still, and then small again . . . and this was because Felix was repeatedly, compulsively hitting it with his hammer . . . and this was because the code-disrupted handyman had lost all control of his right arm.

The golden hammer was vibrating in Felix's hand so fervently that it shook half of his body, but he was physically unable to let go of it, or to even loosen the grip of his gloved fingers around the handle. His right arm was swinging ceaselessly in every direction entirely of its own accord, almost as if it and the hammer had grown a shared sentience and were simultaneously trying to detach themselves from the socket of his shoulder, as well as "fix" any and everything within their reach, regardless of whether it needed fixing. The violent, sporadic movements were made all the more bizarre-looking by the fact that the rest of Felix remained still and wearily calm as he sat there slumped forward with his chin in his free hand, unable to do anything about the spasmodic flailing of the arm that gripped the hammer.

Ralph let out a frustrated growl and turned away. He began pacing back and forth as well, taking care not to step on any of the Nicelanders as they scrambled underfoot.

"Well . . . there's gotta be _something _we can do about it!" he reasoned fretfully. "Tell me again how it started this morning."

"I'm telling you, Ralph, it _has _to be something I picked up from Tammy," Felix answered in a resigned, tired voice. It was obvious from the change in his tone when he mentioned his wife's name that he was still much too worried about her wellbeing to give more than a passing, reluctant consideration to his own. "Don't you remember the way she went pale and fainted in Street Fighter on Saturday night? Well, the same thing happened to me last night in Hero's Duty, didn't it? . . . then, when I woke up in my apartment this morning, _this _was happening!" he gestured helplessly with his free hand to the wild, involuntary swings of his arm. "And for all I know, it might have even started hours before that, while I was asleep_ . . . _the darn thing was already in my hand before I even opened my eyes!"

"We're doomed! We're _doomed!" _Norwood began wailing suddenly. "We're all gonna die!"

"What? No, we're _not . . .!"_

"But what are we going to _do_, Felix!?" Mary pleaded. "You can't possibly work in this condition!"

"As soon as someone tries to play us, Litwak's going to see that we're out of order!"

". . . and we don't have any of that _stuff, _that . . . that code sedative, or whatever, they gave to Calhoun!" Ralph chimed in anxiously. "How are we going to get this under control, Felix!?"

"This is it! We've had it for sure, this time!"

"Our plug is as good as pulled!"

"We're all doomed!_ Doomed!"_

"Everybody, BE _QUIET!"_

The sudden, authoritative firmness of Felix's voice made Ralph and the Nicelanders stop their frantic pacing and muttering, and they all looked up at him simultaneously in stunned, obedient silence. Ralph couldn't remember ever hearing Felix talk that way to them before . . . because of his regularly mild and unassuming disposition, it was sometimes easy to forget that beneath it all, he still really was the program-ordained leader of their game.

"Listen to me, _everyone!" _Felix ordered sternly, standing up from the chair and trying - without much success - to use his left arm to hold his flailing right one still against his side. "We are not going to _die. _In all likelihood, _yes, _we're going to be put out of order today . . . _but!" _he added sharply, raising his voice when the Nicelanders began to whimper again. _"But . . . _as soon as the arcade is closed, I'm going to go _straight _to Hero's Duty to check on my wife and to have the medics there sedate my code, just like they did hers, and then we'll have the whole night to figure out what's causing this and put a _stop _to it . . . . who knows? The soldiers might have it figured out already, as we speak! We'll be up and running again by tomorrow morning, I _promise _you all . . . . everything is going to be o_kay."_

It was at that exact instant that the Fix-It Felix Jr. quarter alert sounded.

Despite Felix's attempts to reassure them, Ralph couldn't help but feel as if the warning alarm ringing out through the grave stillness of the game atmosphere was akin to a proclamation of doom. The Nicelanders immediately began to panic again, muttering fervently amongst themselves and darting their heads in every direction. On the other side of the apartment building, the cut scene was playing on the game screen along with the opening theme music, and the moment when Ralph was supposed to stomp out and say his line was rapidly approaching.

"What should I _do, _Felix!?" Ralph hissed frantically.

His protagonist's glowing eyes were wide and nervous, but the firm resolve of his voice and his demeanor never wavered.

"Nothing," he whispered back solemnly, still struggling to hold down his corrupted arm as he inched toward the back edge of the building and peeked furtively around it. Ralph and the Nicelanders followed him on tiptoe and sneaked cautious glances at the game screen, where a girl with braces and black braids was waiting impatiently for the game to start.

"There's nothing we _can _do," Felix muttered, his spastic hammer hitting one of the bricks at the back of the building a few times and making it change size inconspicuously. "I'm afraid that for now . . . . we have no choice but to just let our game go down quietly."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It had been an exceptionally busy morning for Masterwork. Mike had had six different players before the arcade had been open even fifteen minutes, and she was already kicking herself for having stayed up the whole night painting. Still, she couldn't deny that the pleased smiles of the numerous children lining up to play her game never failed to cheer her up and help her to forget a bit of her fatigue . . . . as well as her lingering, worrisome thoughts about the Internet. She had so many gamers that morning, in fact, that it was almost nine forty-five by the time she finally had a bit of a break between quarter alerts.

That was when she heard it.

In the back of her mind as she was guiding gamers through the puzzle-painting challenges, Mike had been vaguely aware that the arcade seemed to be inordinately noisy that morning . . . and not just noisy with the usual chatter and hubbub of rowdy kids, but with an atmosphere of erratic talking and shouting that was strangely uneasy and troubled. It wasn't until she had a free moment with no gamers, however, that she could hear well enough to understand any of what was being said.

"Mr. _Lit_wak . . . "

From somewhere out of sight to the left of her screen, Mike heard the aged arcade proprietor give a frustrated sigh.

"Let me guess . . . " he grumbled wearily, and Mike strained her ears to listen as she tried to remain in character. " . . . game giving you trouble?"

"Yeah," the first voice - which she could tell belonged to a little girl - answered unhappily. "Something's wrong with Fix-It Felix Jr. It ate my quarter, and nothing's happening."

Mike froze.

Litwak sighed again, even louder this time.

"With the way this day is going? I'm not surprised. Here's your quarter back . . . . and I guess I can add Ralph and Felix to the list now, too. That makes _sixteen games _out of order today . . . . sixteen! And it's not even _ten _in the morning! Something fishy's going on here . . . "

The little girl said something else, and her voice as well as Litwak's trailed off indiscernibly as they moved out of earshot of the Masterwork console . . . but Mike wasn't paying attention to them anymore. She was staring straight ahead through the glass barrier of her game screen with a look of pale dread slowly growing on her face, gripping her brush and palette tighter and tighter until her knuckles almost trembled.

_Ralph . . . ._

For almost a full minute, she stood there that way, frozen with shock, not knowing what to do, a knot of panic gradually tightening sharper and sharper in her chest . . . . until finally, something inside of her gave way, and without a second thought or another instant's hesitation, Mike dropped her painting tools and whirled around, turning her back on the game screen and darting to the middle of her studio. She threw the edge of the Persian rug back, knocking over her chair in the process, wrenched open the hatch door and jumped through it without looking back.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

By the time his wristwatch read ten a.m., Litwak had come to a final decision. A twelve-year-old boy came up to him complaining that Masterwork was broken - that the artist girl was missing - and he refunded the kid's quarters and shooed him away without bothering to even check the game first or post an Out-of-Order sheet on it. So many of the game screens in the room were now covered up with the orange flyers that it would have been more expedient to tape signs on every console that _wasn't _broken.

At this point, there was really only one thing to do. His face crinkling with a heavy, reluctant frown, Litwak made his way through the remaining clusters of angry patrons and moved to stand in front of the glass doors, turning his back to them and looking sadly around at his now drastically handicapped arcade.

"Excuse me, everyone . . . if I can have your attention for just a minute," he raised his voice loudly over the room, and after a moment everyone became silent and turned to look at him.

Litwak hesitated another second, then pursed his lips and breathed a long, dejected sigh through his nose. He pulled one of the swinging doors and held it open, gesturing toward it with his free hand.

"I'm sorry, kids, but as you can see . . . . we appear to be having some kind of technical issue with most of our games today. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask all of you to leave now . . . . I'm closing the arcade until I can get this mess sorted out. If you want, you can check back with us in a couple of days . . . hopefully, things will be back to normal by then."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Mike didn't stop running until she had made it all the way to the threshold of her game gate just outside the main transit area of Grand Central Station . . . . and the only reason that she stopped there was to keep herself from stumbling headlong into a frenzied crowd of other characters so thick, they nearly blocked off the entrance to Masterwork. When she looked up and saw them, Mike let out a startled cry and dug her bare heels into the slick linoleum, sliding several feet and skidding to a halt just short of the edge of the mob.

Breathing hard and narrowing her eyes in stunned confusion, Mike leaned on the golden archway at the end of her gate and looked around with a steadily growing sense of alarm, scanning her eyes back and forth across the churning sea of frightened activity.

The station before her was rapidly filling up with too many characters to count, pouring out of almost every game gate in a steady stream of chaotic traffic, and nearly every single one of them seemed to be caught in the throes of sheer panic . . . once inside the station, they went running and scrambling in every direction, grouping together in one place and then dispersing again and clustering somewhere else, asking frantic questions of anyone who would listen. Everybody was talking at once, but no one seemed able to explain what was going on.

Mike hesitated a moment, eyeing the perilous-looking passage out of her game with a twinge of uncertainty . . . but as soon as she remembered her reason for coming, the frightening refrain of the little girl's words ringing in the back of her mind . . . _something's wrong with Fix-It Felix Jr. . . . _she set her jaw fiercely, took a deep breath, and plunged into the throng.

As she struggled to fight her way toward the entrance to Ralph's game through the jostling crowd of characters, Mike overheard brief, frantic snatches of conversation that pierced through the constant din of indiscernible noise.

". . . don't understand what's _going on . . . _one minute he was fine, and the next his _eyes _were glowing and he started blasting everything in sight! I just don't understand . . ."

". . . closed . . . . _closed, _at ten in the morning on a _Monday! _This is bad . . . this is _really bad . . ."_

" - othing like this has ever happened before, not in _my _lifetime . . . "

"It's happening to almost everyone in my game . . . "

"The entire wing of fighting games by the air-hockey tables is out of commission!"

" . . . the SPs aren't even _trying_ to detain anyone at this point . . . "

"First that lockdown, and now _this? _There's no denying it, man . . . this whole thing has _virus _written all over it."

_Virus._

The second she overheard someone mutter the word_, _something like a jolt of electricity shot through Mike's brain and she jerked her head up, stumbling to a halt and bumping blindly into a small group of zombies, who pushed past her without a second glance.

_Virus._

She had never heard the word spoken aloud before, nor had it ever appeared of its own accord in her mental lexicon . . . but for some reason she wasn't sure of, the instant it reached her ears, Mike's thoughts were abruptly transported back to something vague and foreboding that Vanellope had said on the night Ralph first introduced her, when the three of them had been talking about the incident of the lockdown . . .

_" . . . you tell __**me**__, Smarty-Pants. I'm just saying, if there was a blue woman there, then it obviously had to be ol' Lockdown Loudmouth. Maybe she took off into one of the games to investigate . . . or . . . maybe . . . whatever took down the firewalls got to __**her**__, too." _

_Whatever took down the firewalls . . . . _

_" . . . I went through a gate and read some signs and all of a sudden everything started flashing, and there was all this noise, and then . . . then . . . " and then Mike had abruptly forgotten, the glitch in her head spontaneously wiping clean a patch of her memory for the second time._

_Virus . . ._

Mike mouthed the word silently once more to herself, and all of a sudden something dark and uncertain began to form in her mind, the blurred outline of a shape with no substance and no name that filled her with an inexplicable sensation of dread. For another minute, she just stood there paralyzed by it in the midst of crowd, not looking at the other characters as they pushed and jostled past her, staring into space without seeing anything but the horror of the thing that was slowly taking form in her mind's eye.

_Something that shrieked, something inhuman . . . something electric blue, with many legs . . . . _

_. . . . the Internet . . . . the tunnel on the right . . . ._

All at once, the sick mixture of realization and forgotten memory welling up inside of her became too frightening to bear, and Mike's body was wracked with a heavy shudder as she breathed deeply and grit her teeth against it, forcibly deracinating the budding seeds of dread and terror from the soil of her mind before they could further take root.

She set her sights once more on Fix-It Felix Jr., closed her ears to everything around her, and took off at a frantic half-run toward the gate of Ralph's game.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It was at ten o'clock in the morning - only about fifteen minutes after the screen of Fix-it Felix Jr. had been covered up with the familiar, dreaded Out-of-Order sign that submerged the entire game in a sinister orange light - that Ralph, Felix, and the Nicelanders, now milling about anxiously on the front patio of the apartment building, heard Litwak's distant, disembodied voice sounding out the announcement that made of them all stop dead in their tracks and look up at the obscured game screen with mixed expressions of shock, fear, and confusion.

"I'm sorry, kids, but as you can see . . . . we appear to be having some kind of technical issue with most of our games today. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask all of you to leave now . . . . I'm closing the arcade until I can get this mess sorted out. If you want, you can check back with us in a couple of days . . . hopefully, things will be back to normal by then."

There was a muffled, communal groan from the remaining gamers, followed by grumbling and half-hearted complaints and the gradual shuffle of many feet all exiting the arcade at the same time. There was a brief pause . . . then the sound of Litwak locking the doors from the inside and walking slowly back to his office . . . the lights in the arcade turned off, the office door clicked shut . . . . and then, everything was quiet.

A deathly silence settled over everyone in Fix-It Felix Jr., and for a long minute they just stood there, looking up at the orange filter of their screen as if trying to see through it to the unprecedented incident taking place on the other side. Gene was the first one to find his voice again, and it came out in a soft, disbelieving mutter.

"He . . . . he closed the arcade? The _entire arcade?"_

"On a Monday morning?" Lucy added hollowly, sounding as if she were about to faint.

There was a ripple of murmuring among the other Nicelanders, then another short silence as the gravity of the situation slowly sank in to everyone present.

"Felix . . . " Ralph said finally, breaking his gaze from the orange screen and looking down at his malfunctioning protagonist with a serious stare. " . . . I don't think you should leave the game right now."

Felix sighed, then adjusted the brim of his cap with his good hand and doggedly narrowed his eyes.

"I _have _to, Ralph."

Without another word, Felix set off at a brisk hop toward the train station - as brisk as his flailing right arm would allow - and Ralph and the others followed him mechanically.

"But . . . you said yourself, your code disruption isn't really thatbad!" Ralph pleaded as he trotted to keep up with Felix's swift platformer leaps. "Maybe it will stop on its own if you just give it a minute! Felix, something _bad_ is happening, something way bigger than just you and Calhoun . . . if there really is some kind of a v . . . a v . . . a _you know what, _loose in the arcade, then you shouldn't be - "

_"Ralph!" _Felix cut him off with a sharp look, coming to a stop at the station platform and spinning around to face him and the Nicelanders. "I appreciate your concern, but this isn't _about _me right now. This is about my _wife. _There is no way I'm going to leave her weak and possibly still _malfunctioning _in her game while I hide here like a coward . . . _especially _with what's happening in the arcade right now!"

Felix hopped into the first car of the train, and Ralph could see from the steeled expression in his glowing blue eyes that any attempts to dissuade him would prove useless.

"Then . . . then let me _come with you, _at least!"

"Absolutely _not! _It's bad enough you risked your life in Hero's Duty _once . . . _I could never forgive myself if something happened to you because I let you do it a second time. She's _my _wife, Ralph, and this code disruption is _our _problem . . . you and the Nicelanders need to stay here where you're safe, at least until we can figure out what's going on this arcade!"

Ralph opened his mouth to argue again, but Felix immediately silenced him with a piercing look as the station whistle sounded and the train began to rattle backwards into the brick tunnel.

"No _flex _on this one, brother!" Felix called, his voice echoing and his hammer flashing brightly in the darkness as he shrank further and further away. "All of you, just stay here and _stay together _. . . I'll be back before you can say _Tobikomi!"_

With that, Felix and the train vanished from sight down the tunnel, and Ralph and the Nicelanders were left standing helplessly on the station platform. For a long moment, none of them could think of anything to say.

"Ralph . . . " Mary uttered presently under her breath, turning a fearful eye up to his face. " . . . you don't . . . you don't really think this is all happening because of a . . . _virus . . . _do you?"

The other Nicelanders all turned to look up at him, and for an instant Ralph was heatedly over-conscious of their eyes all pressing on him together. He swallowed thickly, a nervous flash of memory from his fight with Vanellope searing unbidden into his mind . . .

_"All this craziness that's been going on ever since Masterwork was plugged in . . . I think __**she's **__the reason for it . . . . I think __**she's a virus**__, Ralph!"_

The Nicelanders waited, leaning a fraction closer to him and making him take a small, fidgeting step backward.

"Well . . . I, uh . . . " he stammered uncomfortably, looking away from their anxious faces. " . . . I'm not really, uh . . . "

Then, to Ralph's relief as well as his surprise, the station whistle suddenly blew again, and all of them started and turned curiously toward the sound of the train clamoring back down the tunnel into the game.

"Felix?" a few of the Nicelanders chimed hopefully, cramming together on the edge of the platform. "He can't be back al_ready, _can he?"

Ralph narrowed his eyes perplexedly at the mouth of the tunnel as the train gradually chugged into view . . . but before it had even passed through the archway in the dim light from the station, he recognized the mane of wild hair and the pair of worrying green eyes piercing out through the darkness.

_"Mike!" _he cried out in shock and amazement, gently pushing the Nicelanders aside with his hands and leaning eagerly over the tracks as the train came clattering up to them.

"Who's _Mike?" _one of the Nicelanders muttered under their breath.

As soon as the train had come to a complete stop beside to station, Mike looked up, saw Ralph, and immediately made a long, gasping sound of relief, closing her eyes and slumping back in the car for a moment with her hand over her forehead.

"Mike . . . what are you doing he - ?" Ralph started, but before he could finish she had bolted to her feet and leapt out of the train, throwing herself at his chest and squeezing him a tight hug.

"You're al_right!" _she cried fervently. "Thank _goodness _you're alright, Ralph, I was so _worried . . ."_

Stunned speechless for just a moment by the voracious embrace - and going just slightly red when he remembered the crowd of Nicelanders standing there watching them - Ralph gently put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her a step back so he could look her in the face.

"What do you mean? Of course I'm alright! You shouldn't have _come _here, Mike, it isn't safe to be moving around the arcade right now!"

"I know!" she countered explanatorily, looking him sharply in the eye. "That's why I came! I overheard that your game was out of order, and I had to make sure you were o_kay _. . . but the same thing is happening all over the arcade! The station was so full of characters fleeing their games, I could barely make it through!"

A terrified chorus of gasping and muttering erupted from the Nicelanders, and Ralph narrowed his eyes as his brain raced to try and piece together everything that was happening.

"That's . . . that's why Litwak closed us down! Whatever's happening to Calhoun and Felix must have gotten into all of the other games, too!"

Mike blinked, her brow furrowing in shock.

"What? What's happening to Calhoun and Felix!? Are they _okay!?"_

Ralph started, hesitating and cringing inwardly as he tried to think of a way to explain the situation to Mike without bringing up the dreaded _v _word, Vanellope's accusations against her still ringing dismally in the back of his mind.

"They . . . well, they . . . we think there's something wrong with their code. It's making them lose control of some of their program functions."

"Something wrong with their _code?" _Mike repeated. "You mean like a glitch?"

"No, not . . . _exactly . . . _it's, it's hard to explain. There's a chance they might have . . . well . . . _caught _something."

The moment he said it, Ralph thought he saw a strange, flickering light of fear and understanding flash through Mike's eyes . . . but before either of them could say another word, everyone standing on the train station platform was once again startled to hear the sound of something approaching rapidly through the Fix-It Felix tunnel. It took Ralph only a split second to recognize the loud, vibrating roar that grew louder and louder as it zoomed toward them, and when he did he let go of Mike's shoulders and his eyes bugged in alarm.

Mike must have recognized it too, because, she had turned to squint at the brick archway and was muttering bewilderedly under her breath, "Is that . . . . is that a _go-kart engine?"_

No sooner had she spoken than the volume of the noise hits its peak, and the next second something white and glittering and moving very, very fast came barreling out of the mouth of the tunnel, headed straight toward them.

"LOOK OUT!" Ralph shouted. The Nicelanders screamed in unison and scattered like a flock of pigeons, and in one swooping motion, Ralph grabbed Mike in his arms and leapt off of the platform with her, the two of them landing on the grass and rolling in a jumbled heap just as the speeding candy-kart came bucking over the tracks and careening straight up onto the station platform, where it promptly crashed headlong into one of the pillars supporting the overhang.

_KKRRSSHHAAMM!_

There was a bursting cloud of powdered sugar dust and a backfire of sweet-smelling exhaust fumes, followed by the sound of someone coughing, then stumbling out of the wreckage onto the wooden platform with strangely hard, _clacking _footsteps.

Mike, who was lying sprawled on top of him, shook herself in shock and whipped the hair out of her eyes. Ralph grunted softly and propped himself up on his elbows, and the two of them peered over at the station to see who it was who had nearly plowed into them with the now totaled candy-kart. Ralph's jaw dropped.

"Sour _Bill!?"_

The dazed green sourball staggered dizzily on the platform, his large eyes rolling in opposite directions for a moment until he recovered himself from the kart crash - the kart which Ralph suddenly recognized as being the glittery white-chocolate machine that had long ago been driven by King Candy, and which since his demise had been relegated to a permanent fixture of the golden throne in the main hall of Vanellope's castle. When Sour Bill looked up and saw Ralph lying on the grass nearby, his green eyes lit up with a flash of terrified urgency.

"Wreck-It Ralph!" he cried frantically as he scrambled over to the two of them, his voice uncharacteristically rife with emotion. "Wreck-It Ralph, thank _gumdrops _you're still here! I need you to come with me to Sugar Rush _right now!"_

"Whoa, _whoa . . . _slow down a minute, Cough Drop!" Ralph muttered, sitting up straight and letting Mike ease sideways off of his chest to kneel beside him in the grass, looking back and forth between him and Sour Bill with a hopelessly confused expression. "What's the big idea charging in here and almost _running us over? _Do you even know how to drive that thi - "

"I'm sorry, I'm _sorry, _but we don't have _time _for that now!" the sputtering candy-ball begged. "PLEASE, Ralph, you have to come with me to Sugar Rush _immediately! _It's an emergency!_"_

_"Why?"_ Ralph demanded, growing more cross and agitated by the second. "Maybe you haven't noticed, but the whole arcade is one big emergency right now!"

"No, _no, _you don't understand! It's not the _game, _Ralph . . . . it's _Vanellope!"_

Ralph froze.

"President Vanellope . . . " Sour Bill cried anxiously, his face wrought with desperation. " . . . she's got the virus, Ralph . . . . and it's _taken control of her glitch!"_


	36. Chapter 35: When Your Thoughts Turn Sour

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 35: When Your Thoughts Turn Sour . . ._

"Hold on, Wreck-It . . . . slow down! _Wait for me!"_

Ralph was breathing so hard and his heart was thudding in his ears so loudly, he barely even heard Sour Bill's voice echoing behind him in the Fix-It Felix Jr. tunnel. It took every ounce of his will-power to force himself to skid to a halt at the opening into the anteroom and look back, his eyes flashing with a frenetic, half-crazed glare.

Mike was only a few paces behind him, but Sour Bill, with his tiny stride and clumsily designed feet, was lagging so far back that he was almost still hidden in the darkness. Ralph let out a sharp growl and backtracked into the tunnel, snatching the breathless candy-ball up in one hand before he could protest and then sprinting with him toward the station.

"I thought we were in a _hurry _here!" he snarled savagely, blowing past Mike without waiting for her to catch her breath. The three of them - Sour Bill now gripped in Ralph's pumping fist with his detached hands and feet trailing swiftly behind his body - ran down to the game gate as fast as their feet would carry them, and Ralph didn't even bat an eye as he plowed straight through the Fix-It Felix archway and into the dense swarm of characters filling the station. He shoved past body after startled body without so much as glancing at them, ignoring Sour Bill's cries of discomfort as he was swung back and forth with every stride. Mike reached out and latched onto the back of his overalls with one hand just to keep up with him, her feet practically lifting right off the floor as he began to drag rather than guide her through the crowd . . . but at that moment, he had all but forgotten her.

He had all but forgotten everything, except . . .

_"President Vanellope . . . . she's got the virus, Ralph . . . . __**and it's taken control of her glitch**__!"_

The instant those words had left Sour Bill's mouth, every one of the terrible, alarming things that had transpired within the last twenty-four hours . . . the code disruptions, the arcade closing, all the games going out of order, even the fight in the Diet Cola caves, along with the bitter rage that it had implanted and left festering inside of him _. _. . had shrunk down into nothingness, and were replaced by one single, driving need . . . . the need to get to Sugar Rush as fast as was humanly possible.

_It's taken control of her __**glitch**__._

The urgency of that need was so great, so consuming, that it even almost left no room inside him for an emotional response to the news that Vanellope was in danger.

Almost.

Ralph showed no outward sign of it, either in his steeled expression or demeanor, as he went barreling unceremoniously - with Mike and Sour Bill in tow - through the last cluster of characters standing between him and Sugar Rush, then charged forward through the gate and into the tunnel without an instant's pause . . . . but deep, deep inside, encased within the calloused shell of the physical need to keep running, there was an ember . . . a searing, smoldering ember of _fear._

It was a fear of an intense, specific type and degree which he had only truly felt once before in his life . . . . at the moment he had been dangling hundreds of feet above the Mentos cap of Diet Cola Mountain in the claws of King Candybug, watching as his first and only friend was about to be destroyed by ravenous monsters.

And now . . . like then . . . that fear had allowed him to realize, in a rare moment of absolute clarity, that no matter what cruel or angry words had passed between them the day before, no matter what either of them had tried to claim to the contrary . . . Vanellope was more than just his best friend.

She was someone he couldn't bear to think of living without.

_She was someone whose life - if he could - he would, without a moment's hesitation, gladly give his own to save. _

And it was those thoughts, pulsing quietly and constantly in the deepest, innermost part of his heart, that propelled him down the dark tunnel into Sugar Rush, clenching his teeth in dread, running faster than he had ever known he had the ability to run, and pleading silently in his head with every step . . .

_Please . . . please . . . __**PLEASE, **__let her be okay . . . just let her be okay, __**please **__. . . . _

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_The first time it happened, she had almost fallen out of the castle._

_It was eight thirty in the morning - just a short while before the arcade was going to open - and Vanellope was leaning against the railing of the balcony attached to her presidential suite, looking out over her grandiose private view of the Royal Raceway and struggling to banish the intermittent swells of dizziness - as well as the painful, brooding memory of her fight with Ralph - from her head. She was having little success with either._

_The same feeling of sick, overwhelming dizziness that had forced her to come screeching to a stop in her candy-kart the day before had greeted her the instant she opened her eyes earlier that morning . . . and now, more than an hour later, it had still yet to dissipate. It came in sporadic rushes and swells - some that only made her shudder and blink a few times, and some so strong they almost buckled her knees - and would die down a bit in between, but never left her entirely. After countless failed attempts to will the disorientation away, she had finally staggered out onto the balcony in hopes that the fresh air might do her some good, wondering how on earth she was going to make it to the Raceway by the time the arcade opened if it didn't . . . . _

_. . . . and that was when it happened._

_She hadn't been resting her elbows on the white chocolate railing for a full minute when suddenly, without the slightest hint of warning . . . there was no railing._

_It was as if the solid fixture against which she was leaning had abruptly transmuted into nothing more than a hologram or a cloud of vapor, and she instantly went falling straight through it and teetering dangerously on the edge of the stories-high balcony._

_Vanellope let out a yelp of shock and reeled backwards, throwing herself down safely on the balcony floor the instant she regained her balance and scrambling away from the edge. Her eyes wide and her heart hammering in her mouth, she looked back to see what could have possibly made the railing just evaporate out from under her . . . and stopped._

_An icy chill of confusion and fear gripped her like a paralysis._

_The balcony railing had not vanished at all. It was still sitting right there in front of her . . . but blinking and blipping over its white surface, like bugs skittering on the face of a rock, were glowing blue bits of disjointed code, flashes of pixilated binary that rippled once and then disappeared._

_She had seen that same ripple of disrupted pixels far too many times in her life to mistake it now. _

_Her breath quickening and her chest beginning to tighten gradually with panic and dread, Vanellope slowly looked down at her hands._

_The same, familiar scramble of glowing binary was just fading from the ends of her fingertips, her code giving a final shiver before leaving her once more intact. The railing hadn't phased out from under her . . . she had phased **through it**. _

_She was __**glitching**__. _

_For the first time in over a year, Vanellope was glitching __involuntarily__._

_For one still, frightened moment, she sat there alone on the balcony looking down at her hands, struggling to comprehend what was happening. After a long silence, she cautiously rose to her feet and began walking quickly back toward the sugar-spun French doors that opened into her bedroom._

_She hadn't made it over the threshold before it happened again._

_This time, the glitch originated somewhere deep in the center of her body, jolting her from the pit of her stomach and rippling through her limbs so violently she dropped to her knees with a startled gasp and a faint shudder of pain._

_As soon as the glitch passed, Vanellope jerked her head up, breathing hard. Raw panic seized hold of her and she scrambled to her feet, sprinting across her bedroom and skidding out into the hallway._

_"SOUR BILL!" she screamed frantically, her voice echoing down the empty corridor as she ran toward the staircase. "Bill, come quick! I have to get to the code room right n - "_

_Before she could reach the top of the stairs, another glitch crippled her in tracks and sent her reeling into the wall . . . but the wall didn't stop her. Her feet kept stumbling and her hands kept flailing, and for a split second she was blinded by a wash of brilliantly flashing pixels, and the next moment she found herself suddenly standing in one of the spare guest bedrooms down the hall and across from her presidential suite._

_Vanellope darted her eyes to the wall she'd just glitched through and saw a lingering silhouette of pixels, blipping and fragmenting the surface just as they had on the balcony railing . . . but this time, they didn't go away after a few seconds._

_For an instant, she was too stunned and terrified to speak. Then, when she opened her mouth to desperately call out for help again, she glitched a fourth time . . . and phased straight through the floor, falling like a stone from the ceiling of the parlor room below. Her scream was cut short when she landed on a marshmallow sofa and bounced twice, then went sprawling to the floor . . . but she was glitching again before she could even stagger to her feet._

_"Sa-OUUR Bill! . . . " she cried helplessly, her voice distorted by the jarring scrambles that split her code into fragments and then fused them instantaneously back together, over and over so that she was hardly able to drag herself toward the door of the room. "SomeBO-Ody . . . ANYBODY . . . he-ELP ME . . . !"_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

" . . . but no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't!" Sour Bill finished explaining breathlessly, still clamped in Ralph's hand as he went sprinting up the lofted road that lead to the front entrance of the Candy Castle. Mike now had both arms wrapped around his neck and was holding on for dear life as he piggybacked her effortlessly along. "Every time we even got close to her, she just glitched out of our hands_ . . . _so as soon as we found out the arcade had closed early, I took the kart from the throne room and went to get you!"

"So you just _left her there ALONE!?" _Ralph growled incredulously at the candy-ball in his hand without looking at him or slowing his pace.

"Not _alone . . . _the whole palace staff was trying to keep up with her when I left! I had no choice_, _Wreck-It, I didn't know what else to do! I thought that if _anyone _could help Vanellope get ahold of herself, maybe _you_ could . . . "

"Why didn't you just go in and try to fix her code from the inside?"

"Because, only _main characters_ can access the program core of a game. That's why Turbo was able to reprogram Sugar Rush, and that's why we were trying to help Vanellope get to the code room . . . but it was no use! She was glitching straight through the walls, no one could touch her! And what's worse, it's not just _her _the virus is affecting . . . it's somehow spreading her glitch!"

"What do you mean, 'spreading her glitch'? Spreading it to _what?" _Ralph demanded.

"To THAT!" Mike suddenly screamed in alarm from just behind him, her arm shooting forward over his shoulder to point up ahead of them at the rapidly approaching front doors of the castle.

Ralph glanced up just in time to see what looked like a scattered wave of the same glowing blue pixilation that always accompanied Vanellope's glitch rippling straight down the white chocolate wall of the palace and encircling the enormous doorway. There was a distorted blipping noise like a surge of electronic static, and Ralph's eyes bugged in alarm as he saw the pair of huge, heavily inlaid chocolate doors suddenly glitch free of their hinges and begin tilting toward them like a drawbridge.

Ralph clumsily stopped running and ground his heels into the courtyard floor, sending up a spray of dust and sugar crystals as he slid, but it was no use . . . he, Mike, and Sour Bill were skidding straight toward the entrance with too much momentum to slow themselves in time, and were just seconds away from being flattened under the falling doors. The three of them let out a helpless cry in unison, and Ralph squeezed his eyes shut and held his arms up over his head, bracing himself for the inevitable crushing impact . . .

. . . but then, it never came.

They slid straight up to the threshold where the doors were falling, but somehow weren't hit by them. Instead, there was another disrupted sound blip and a fizzle of binary particles, and the next thing Ralph knew he was tripping over the doorstep and went sprawling on his hands and knees on the floor of the throne room foyer. A loud _bam _sounded just behind him as the doors hit the ground_, _followed by another electric buzz as they glitched again. Mike let out a jostled grunt, flopping on top of him like a backpack as Ralph fell to the floor, and Sour Bill went flying out of his grasp and spinning across the room until he hit the nearest wall.

The three of them lay there stunned and silent for a few seconds. Mike was the first to recover, rolling off of Ralph's back and clambering to her feet. He followed her shortly, shaking himself and blinking away the last jitter of shock.

"W-what just happened!?" he stammered. "We . . . we phased right through the door!"

"I _told _you!" Sour Bill cried as soon as he found his feet again and waddled back to them. "Vanellope's glitch is _spreading _somehow . . . it's affecting everything she touches! The walls, the floor, the furniture . . . she's scrambling code wherever she goes!"

"Then . . . how are we going to help her, if we can't even get close to her?" Mike asked anxiously.

Ralph opened his mouth . . . then stopped, realizing with a cold twinge of dread that he had no answer. The driving, frantic urge to get to Vanellope was still pulsing inside of him so hard it ached, but he was now paralyzed by the reality that he had no idea what he could possibly do for her when he did. He glanced pleadingly first at Sour Bill, who looked every bit as helpless and frightened as he felt . . . then at Mike, whose brow was furrowed sharply with desperation, her brain churning visibly behind the piercing green stare of her eyes.

And then, something in Mike's gaze sparked a sudden flash of revelation in his brain, and Ralph's eyes widened as the answer to their problem all at once became clear to him.

"There's only one way," he declared abruptly, making both Mike and Sour Bill jump and glance up at him. "We _have_ to get into the program core and get rid of whatever's disrupting her code."

Sour Bill groaned exasperatedly.

"I already _TOLD YOU, _Wreck-It, we _can't! _No one can access the code of a game except - "

"A main character," Ralph finished for him . . . then put his hand firmly on Mike's shoulder, making her look up sharply in surprise. "And we've _got one. _Mike is the main character of Masterwork. She can access the core and reset Vanellope's code."

Mike's jaw dropped.

"I can _what!?" _she blurted incredulously.

Ralph turned to face her and put his other hand on her other shoulder, holding her firmly in front of him and forcing her to meet his hardened gaze.

"Listen to me, Mike. You can do this. You _have _to. There's no other way."

Her jaw hovered for a moment in a mixture of dismay and disbelief, and she began to sputter fretfully.

"But . . . b-but I can't . . . Ralph, I hardly even know anything about my _own _code, how am I supposed to . . . !?"

"You'll figure it out, I _know _you will! I've seen you do it . . . all you have to do is get a good look at something once_, _and you understand it right away! You taught yourself Japanese just from overhearing part of a pop song! You're _smart, _Mike, smarter than you know . . . . I believe in you. I _know you can do this. _Now GO!"

Sour Bill, still looking frightened and skeptical, but resigning himself to the new plan nonetheless, jumped up and grabbed Mike's hand, pulling her away from Ralph and leading her toward the throne at the far end of the room. Mike stumbled along behind him uncertainly, her eyes darting back and forth between him and Ralph, still stammering in protest.

"But Ralph, what if I . . . what if I make a mistake? What if I hurt Vanellope on accident!?"

"You won't! Just _GO!" _he ordered again loudly, taking off toward the nearest spiral staircase.

"Wait . . . what are _you _going to do?" Sour Bill demanded anxiously after him.

Ralph took the stairs three at a time, bounding up them as fast as his legs could carry him and only pausing to glance back down at Mike and Sour Bill's worried faces when he reached the second floor landing.

"I'm going to find Vanellope," he said flatly, in a tone that no one would ever dare argue with . . . and without another word, he turned and ran down the hallway in the direction of the presidential suite.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Mike's pulse was pounding so hard she almost felt lightheaded as Sour Bill led her hurriedly down a narrow passage hidden behind the throne loft in the main chamber. In spite of her rapidly worsening nerves, she couldn't help but glance around with a hint of curious interest at the rounded, gleaming walls and blue wires of the tunnel . . . she never would have imagined that anything so starkly different from the exclusively candy-constructed environment outside could have been secretly tucked away in the center of the game. However, her fleeting bemusement at the glowing currents and sleek metal was quickly dwarfed by the sick, pessimistic feeling that sank in the pit of her stomach when Sour Bill guided her suddenly into a side hallway even narrower than the first - so narrow that she had to stoop low to even enter it - then came to a halt in front of an enormous controller console mounted at the end of the passage.

_Ralph . . . what were you __**thinking**__? I can't do this, there's no __**way **__I can do this, I have no idea what I'm -_

"Quick, enter the code!" Sour Bill urged suddenly, breaking her anxious train of thought.

Mike winced as she darted her eyes over the huge, unfamiliar buttons of the controller.

"But I don't know what it is," she answered, looking down helplessly at the green sourball, who knit his brow in a _we're-all-doomed _expression and gestured frantically to the arrow buttons on the left.

"You know, the _universal cheat code? _It's up, up, down, down, left right, left right, B, A, _Start! _I thought Wreck-It said you were a main character!?"

"Hey, I never _said _I knew anything about reprogramming a game!"

Sour Bill just groaned and flailed his beady hands even faster. "Whatever, _whatever, _just punch it in already! The door won't open unless a main character enters the cheat code!"

Mike shot another half-hearted glare at the green candy-ball, but quickly forgot about him as she turned to address the controller. She took a deep, uneasy breath and summoned up as much confidence as she could muster.

_Ok, Mike . . . it's for Vanellope. __**Have to help **__Vanellope. _

_You can do this._

She let the breath out in a low, steady exhale, and gingerly tapped the buttons in the correct order, mouthing each command silently to herself as she went.

_Up, up, down, down, left right, left right, B, A . . . Start._

Immediately, the control console spun an abrupt ninety degrees to the right, and with a quick burst of air the circular doors split down the center and slid open. Mike's breath caught in her chest as a void of pitch black suddenly yawned before her, almost seeming to draw her towards it with an eerie magnetism that made her reflexively cling to the sides of the opening with both hands. Gripped with both hesitation and amazement, she peered further into the darkness and saw that a short distance off, floating disconnectedly in the center of the expanse, was an enormous network of strange, colorfully glowing shapes . . . thousands upon thousands of them, all linked together by glistening spider threads of light.

Mike gulped thickly.

"Here . . . put this on."

She looked back over her shoulder and saw Sour Bill holding up what looked like a noose made of licorice rope. Tentative, but curious, she obeyed, sliding the red loop over her head and tightening it firmly around her waist as the candy manservant instructed.

"What is this for?" she asked cautiously.

"It's so you can get back out of the code."

Mike's eyes shot wide open.

"What do mean, _get back out of theeaAAHHH!"_

Before she could finish the question, Sour Bill had given her a hearty _push _from behind and sent her slipping over the edge of the floor and through the circular opening. Mike opened her mouth in a silent gasp as the bottom of her stomach fell out, and all feeling of direction and gravity abruptly vanished as she found herself spinning in the black void.

Her heart pounded wildly for another few seconds until she discovered, much to her relief, that drifting in this place was almost exactly the same as drifting through the Internet, and she immediately felt a bit less overwhelmed. As soon as she regained her bearings and righted herself - her hair and the slack of the licorice rope floating weightlessly around her - she looked back at Sour Bill, silhouetted in the light of the round doorway.

"Alright . . . what do I do now?"

"What do you _do? _You find Vanellope's code and _fix it, _of course!"

Mike narrowed her brow in dismay. "But how do I fix it when I find it?"

Sour Bill just shrugged at her helplessly.

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph was halfway down the hall leading to Vanellope's bedroom when something small and brightly colored suddenly zipped across his path in a streak of pixels and light, zooming underfoot and nearly tripping him. He yelped in surprise, then skidded to a stop and looked back.

"Vanellope?" he cried hopefully . . . then deflated when he saw that it was only one of the candy-corn butlers. The poor little castle attendant had dropped to its knees on the floor, squeezing its eyes shut and holding its forehead with one hand, whimpering as a ripple of scattered binary flickered over it. Ralph crouched down next to the glitching candy-corn, holding his hands out to it uncertainly.

"Hey . . . you okay, little guy?" he asked, quickly but concernedly. "Have you seen Vanellope? Can you tell me the last place you - "

_"Don't touch me!" _the butler cut him off with a sharp squeal, making Ralph jump and draw his hands back. "Please . . . don't touch me, or you'll get it too!"

"Get what?"

"The glitch, Madam President's _glitch! _She 's giving it to everything and everyone that touches her!"

Ralph's heart jumped eagerly into his mouth. "So you _did _see her? Where is she now?"

"I . . . I don't know!" the candy-corn wailed helplessly, shuddering as it was wracked with another involuntary spasm. "The other servants and I managed to track her up to this floor, but as soon as we tried to grab hold of her, she glitched away . . . and it went through all of _us, _too! We got scattered all over the castle, and I haven't seen anyone since!"

The candy-corn began to cry softly as it glitched again. Torn with sympathy for the poor thing, but knowing that he couldn't do anything to help it at the moment, Ralph stood up and resumed his hurried pace down the hallway.

"Don't worry, little guy!" he called back over his shoulder. "I'm gonna find your president and help fix all of this!"

"Just don't _touch _her!" the candy butler stopped crying long enough to shout back. "If you touch her, you'll start glitching too!"

Ralph set his jaw firmly and narrowed his eyes as the squealing voice trailed off behind him.

_He didn't care whether he caught the glitch or not . . . . he didn't care whether he caught the __**virus **__or not. _

_All he cared about was finding her . . . finding her, and doing whatever it took to help her until Mike could fix whatever was happening to her code._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_"Winners' cup . . . Jumbo-tron . . . Candy-cane Forest . . . Rancis Fluggerbutter, Jubileena Bing-Bing_ . . . . Sour Bill, I can't find it!"

"Just keep _looking!" _Sour Bill shouted back to her from the circle of bright light at the other end of her licorice tether, his voice sounding faint and far away. "Vanellope's code block has to be in there somewhere!"

Mike grimaced in frustration and shook her head, but kept on swimming through the seemingly endless network of Sugar Rush programming, scanning her eyes eagerly over every segment of code she passed and muttering their names under her breath.

_"Taffyta Muttonfudge, _no_ . . . Diet Cola Mountain, _no_ . . . Rainbow Bridge, Citizens' Memory, Assorted Fans . . . "_

Then, suddenly, as she was pushing her way carefully through a particularly tangled segment of the pulsing threads connecting all of the code blocks, something bright - brighter than all the other lights around her - flashed in the corner of her eye, a blue glow that was half hidden beneath a clustered swarm of other programming. Mike narrowed her eyes at it and changed course, kicking her feet and floating toward the grouping of blocks. Once there, she gingerly moved them aside one at a time with gentle waves of her hands until she reached the source of the blue light in the center of the tangle . . . and her lips parted with an elated gasp.

"I found it . . . Bill, I _FOUND IT!" _she shouted gratefully, not even sure which direction Sour Bill was in anymore, let alone whether or not he could still hear her.

There in front of her, floating in place like a weightless, glowing treasure chest, was the purple code block that bore the name _Vanellope Von Schweetz_ printed across the side in letters of white light. As she looked at it, the box was flickering intermittently with spastic ripples of ones and zeros, waves of bright blue pixels that licked over its surface every few seconds.

_The glitches . . . ._

"Alright . . . I _found _it, now what do I do?" Mike muttered anxiously to herself.

She pursed her lips thoughtfully, took Vanellope's code box in both hands, and gently tried to lift it further out of the nest of glowing, pulsing threads it was tangled in . . . only to find, to her surprise and alarm, that as soon as she did, it _resisted, _as if another unseen force was struggling to pull it back in the opposite direction.

"What the . . . ?"

Mike narrowed her eyes and gave another firm, but careful _tug, _finally jerking the box free and floating a few feet with it into open space, the threads feeding in and out of it trailing back into the cluster. Letting go of it, Mike swam a full circle around the code module, scrutinizing every inch of its sides and wracking her brain desperately trying to decide what to do next . . . when finally, as she came to the broad back panel of the box, she saw something that made her yelp out loud and reel back from it, cringing in shock and disgust.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The door to the presidential bedroom suite was already hanging ajar when Ralph reached it. He immediately squeezed inside and straightened up, scanning his eyes frantically over the messy room . . . and as he did, the ember of fear that hadn't stopped smoldering inside of him for an instant since he'd left Fix-It Felix Jr. suddenly burned even hotter and more desperately.

All around Vanellope's pink and white bedroom . . . on the floors, the walls, the furniture, and various odds and ends scattered all over the room . . . there were streaks and patches of glowing blue pixels, flickering like living scars over any surface she had glitched through. Ralph's heart wrenched when he saw how many of the lingering marks there were, his mind unable - or unwilling - to even try to imagine the kind of frightening horror she had been going through that morning.

_And him . . . the last thing he'd told her was that she only cared about herself . . . that he liked Mike better than her . . . that he would never come back to see her again._

_He'd done a lot of things in his life he wasn't proud of, but that . . . __**that**__ . . . ._

Ralph shook himself and took a few cautious steps further into the room, forbidding the guilt and anguish to overtake him. _He couldn't afford to give into it and lose his focus . . . not now, not when she needed him . . ._

But when he finally found his voice again, the words came out weak and half-choked with the effort of holding back his emotion.

"Vanellope? K-kid . . . are you in here?"

There was no answer.

Ralph walked to the center of the room, looking around at the disheveled bed, the wide-open French doors, the deserted balcony, the empty, lofted wing that led to her attached bathroom.

His spirits plummeting and desperation threatening to take hold of him, Ralph took a few deep breaths and ran both hands over his head.

"Vanellope . . . where _are _you?"

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

She was huddled in the corner of the third floor billiards room when she heard it.

_"Vanellope? K-Kid . . . are you in here?"_

Vanellope's face was streaked with dried tears, and she was hugging her knees and rocking back and forth, whimpering quietly as her body was wracked repeatedly by minor glitches that were too small and rapid to phase her through the floor, but still sharp enough to leave her aching and shuddering. She was so exhausted and consumed with fear that for a split second after the distant, muffled voice reached her ears the first time, she almost wasn't sure she'd heard it all . . . then, when it sounded again - this time even louder and closer - her eyes shot open and she sat upright, holding her breath and hardly daring to believe it.

_"Vanellope_ . . . _where __**are **__you?"_

Her heart began to pound so hard she could scarcely breathe, and fresh tears instantly welled up in Vanellope's eyes as she dropped forward onto her hands and knees, pressing one ear to the floor and cringing against the fit of small glitches that jolted through her arms and legs.

"RALPH!?" she sobbed out as loudly as she could, trying to force her voice through the floor and into the room below. "RALPH, CAN YOU HEAR ME? I'M UP HERE!"

There were a few seconds of stunned, emotional silence.

Then, Ralph's voice struggled up to her again, muffled by the layer of white chocolate and reinforced hard-candy beams between them.

_"S-stay there . . . I'm coming up to get you!"_

Vanellope's heart leapt joyfully with the first glimmer of hope she'd had since the whole ordeal began . . . _he had come for her, Ralph had really come for her . . . he wasn't mad at her, he didn't hate her . . . _and she began to stagger to her feet, when suddenly a violent glitch ripped through the core of her body and knocked her back down, her legs phasing through the floor up to her knees.

She gaped for a split second in shock, then cried out again as loud as she could, "RALPH, WAIT . . . _WAIT!"_

And the next second, the solidity of the floor evaporated beneath her, and she was falling.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"RALPH, WAIT . . . _WAIT!"_

He had already started to run back to the door of her room the instant he knew she was on the third floor in the room directly above him . . . but when he heard her voice calling down to him again, Ralph jerked to halt and turned back, looking up at the white ceiling with frantic impatience.

"What!?" he cried. "Vanellope, what is it? What's wro - "

_FFZZZFZT._

_"Aaaah!"_

It almost seemed to happen in slow motion.

One instant, he was staring up at a blank patch of ceiling . . . the next, he was looking at a murmur of blue pixels stirring on the hard, white sugar plaster like ripples growing over the surface of a pond . . . and the instant after that, he was blinking and reeling in shock as he watched Vanellope appear before his eyes in a flurry of fragmented code, phasing straight through the ceiling and screaming in alarm as she dropped from above like a stone.

In the split second before her small, thrashing body hit the floor of her bedroom, Ralph threw himself toward her with his arms outstretched and caught her in the palm of his hand, stumbling forward wildly and just barely managing to stay on his feet as he snatched her out of the air.

Time sped back up to its normal pace, and all at once Ralph found himself standing there gasping for breath, his chest heaving and his eyes wide as he stared down at the flushed, shell-shocked little face of the girl cradled protectively in both hands. Two enormous hazel eyes . . . with the whites glowing the same ominous shade of electric blue that he had already seen in the faces of two other friends . . . stared back up at him.

For one long second, everything was quiet again.

Then, he watched the glowing eyes suddenly fill up with glowing tears as he simultaneously felt a thick lump working its way up the back of his throat, and he and Vanellope both cried out and moved for each other at the same instant.

"Kid!" _"Ralph!"_

He pulled her in against his chest with both hands just as she jumped up to throw her arms around his neck, bursting out in a hysterical sob . . . but they hadn't been hugging for even a full two seconds before he felt a telltale warning tremor wracking her tiny frame, and suddenly Vanellope cut her cries short with a horrified gasp and wrenched herself out of his hands, separating herself from him and jumping down onto her bed just as a savage glitch distorted her from head to toe. She bounced once on the sponge-cake mattress, then squeezed her eyes shut and curled up into a shivering ball.

Ralph felt as if his heart had been wrenched out of his chest along with her. He could hardly bear to look at the terrified, shuddering expression on her face, but he forbid himself from turning away. The lump in his throat grew larger and heavier, and for the first time in longer than he could remember he felt something stinging behind his eyes as he immediately reached out to pick her up again . . . but Vanellope opened her eyes and shot her hand up to stop him before he could.

"_No_, Ralph! You can't touch me while I'm glitching, or I'll give it to you too! That's what happened to all the castle servants who tried to help me!"

Her small voice was hoarse from crying, and its heartbreaking sound only made the moment even more unbearable. Not knowing what else to do to vent the pain and emotion threatening to overwhelm him, Ralph let out a fierce growl and whirled around, burying his face in one hand and slamming the other down impotently on the floor, shaking the whole room.

He stayed crouched there for a moment, gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut against the watery sting that was growing sharper and sharper behind them each second . . . then, sucking in a deep breath through his nose, he stood up straight again and turned back to face her, forcing himself to look into her eyes with as strong and reassuring a smile as he could possibly muster.

"Everything's going to be okay, kid," he said firmly, hardening the choked waver out of his voice and leaning protectively over the bed without touching her. "This is all going to be over soon."

A small glitch rippled through her and she cringed, her glowing eyes wide with uncertainty.

"But how do you know?" she cried fearfully. "I don't even know why this is happening . . . Ralph, what if it _never _stops? What will I do!?"

"It _is _going to stop, Vanellope . . . I promise. This is just a code disruption that's going around the arcade . . . the same thing has been happening to characters in all the other games, even Calhoun and Felix caught it_._ It's just a little blip with your programming, and Mike is downstairs in the code room right now fixing it!"

Vanellope's eyes went even wider.

_"What!? _You sent _HER _to mess with my code?"

"She's not going to _mess _with it, she just going to get rid of whatever's causing this!" Ralph insisted sharply, leaning further over and instinctively cupping his hands around her on the mattress in a protective wall. "You just have to _trust _her, Vanellope . . . and trust _me, _too! I promise . . . I'm not going to let _anything _happen to you until this is over."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Attached to the back side of Vanellope's code box, latched on like a parasite with multiple, vein-like feelers sunk into the surface and pulsating slowly as it sucked away at her programming, was . . . . a _thing._

Mike had no name to call the repulsive little entity she was looking at, except _thing . . . . _it was about as long and thick as her arm, glowing brightly in a brilliant shade of electric blue, and its entire body was essentially one lithe tentacle that was plastered against the side of the code segment. The thing made no response to her when she came upon it, nor did it so much as quiver when she cried out in disgust and reeled away from it . . . it just kept on sucking at Vanellope's program, and the intermittent glitches that were rippling over her box coursed through it as well, but didn't seem to deter it in the slightest.

For almost half a minute, Mike just floated there staring at the _thing, _her lip curling in revulsion and her mind racing frantically.

_This was the virus . . . this was what was causing Vanellope's glitches, it __**had **__to be . . . there was nothing like it anywhere else in the Sugar Rush programming. __**This **__was the thing she had to get rid of to fix Vanellope's code . . . . but how? _

After another moment of mental preparation, Mike took a deep breath, held it, and - not knowing what else to try - forced herself to thrust out one hand and grab hold of the virus itself.

The instant she wrapped her fingers around the lithe blue body and _pulled, _there was a nauseating screech and a surge of electricity that she felt pulsing almost painfully up through her arm. They vibrated in her teeth and made the ends of her hair stand up, but she clenched her jaw and refused to let go of the thing, even as it began to wriggle and squirm violently in her grasp.

The glitches on Vanellope's program began to flash faster and brighter, and the leech-like virus clung tighter and tighter to its purchase on the side of the box. Mike grabbed the writhing body with both hands, planted her feet on either side of it and _pulled _with all her might, straightening her legs and arching her back as the virus fought stubbornly against her. Gradually, its tentacle body began to stretch and warp, and there was a series of tiny, electric popping sounds as its feelers were pulled loose from the code box one by one, until finally it was only hanging on by a few tenuous threads.

Mike squeezed her eyes shut and struggled to keep her grip, beads of sweat beginning to form at her temples. The virus screeched louder and louder, refusing to give up the last inch of its foothold.

"Come _on_ . . . " she gritted through her teeth as more pulses of electricity surged from the virus into her body. " . . . _come __**on **__. . . . "_

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As she was sitting curled up on the bed in front of him, Vanellope glitched again . . . and this time, the distortion of pixels was so sharp that it instantly transported her a few feet to the left, depositing her on the far side of the bed. She let out a sharp cry, hugging her knees and breathing faster. Ralph cringed at the sight, but opened his mouth immediately to try and reassure her again . . . but before he could, she had glitched again and teleported down to the floor beside her nightstand.

"Vanellope!" Ralph followed her and crouched down in front of her, wanting desperately to take her up in his arms and cursing the fact that he couldn't.

Something in the code disruption had changed abruptly, he could see it. Vanellope had been frightened before, but now she was almost hysterical . . . she was sucking in rapid panic breaths and gripping the leg of her nightstand with both hands, her eyes darting in every direction as she glitched continually. There were no pauses between distortions now . . . at least one segment of her body was scrambling and reassembling at any given instant, and every few seconds her entire form flashed into loose pixels and reappeared several inches to the left or right.

"It's ge-ETTING WOrse!" she cried frantically, her voice horribly garbled.

Ralph might have been even more terrified than she was, but he forbid himself from showing it. Instead, he kept his voice calm and firm, maintaining constant eye contact with her and desperately trying to help her stay calm.

"It's okay, kid_. _You're going to get through this. _Focus . . ._ your glitch _belongs_ to you now, you said so yourself. It's a part of you that _you _can control! _Focus!"_

"I c-CAn'T!" Vanellope wailed, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks. "I CAN'T stOP it! Ralph . . . Ralph, I'm _scared!"_

"Shhh . . . I know you are, but that's okay. It's _okay to be scared."_

"HE-ELP me, _Ralph!"_

Her desperate cry stung his heart like an arrow and almost broke his resolve . . . he forced back the lump in his throat and narrowed his eyes, inching closer toward her on the floor.

"I'm . . . I'm right here, Vanellope. I'm n-not going anywhere. I'm not going to leave you."

Before she could open her mouth to speak again, Vanellope glitched . . . and disappeared completely.

Ralph's eyes shot wide and an invisible fist of horror punched him in the gut.

"Vanellope!? _VANELLOPE!" _he shouted, bolting to his feet and frantically searching around the room for her.

"RA-lph . . . ouT HERe!"

He heard her frightened, distorted voice calling to him from somewhere nearby, and he jerked his head to see her kneeling on the balcony outside her bedroom, paralyzed by a rolling wave of tiny glitches. He charged out through the French doors after her, but the instant before he reached her she teleported again in a flurry of pixels . . . and this time, she reappeared standing on the edge of the white chocolate railing surrounding the balcony, her eyes wide and her arms flailing as she teetered dangerously over the staggering drop to the landscape below.

_" . . . if something really is disrupting her code, that means there's a chance her regeneration programming __**won't work **__if something happens to her."_

Ralph's heartbeat gave a wrenching thud, then vanished entirely.

"VANELLOPE!_ NO!"_

He sprinted towards her with his hands outstretched . . . another glitch burst her into fragments, and with a gasping cry she toppled backwards over the side of the balcony . . . Ralph dove down on the ground and slid the last few feet separating them, his hand punching through the white-chocolate railing and bursting it to pieces . . . he reached down over the edge, hardly daring to look down as he groped frantically through the air . . . .

. . . . and felt the tips of his fingers snag on something soft and flat.

The instant he felt the insignificant weight of Vanellope's body tugging on his arm, he clamped his hand like a vice on the hood of her sweatshirt and _pulled, _catching her and swinging her back up onto the balcony in one fluid, reflexive motion.

The upper half of his body still hanging over the ledge, he strained his arm back to drop her safely on her feet behind him . . . and at the last split-second before he let go of her, a violent glitch rippled up through her body and into his hand.

Stumbling weakly on her feet and looking up at his arm as the wave of blue disruption spread rapidly up towards his shoulder, Vanellope sucked in a sharp breath of horror.

"NO!" she cried.

Ralph froze. All at once, everything else seemed to stop and become still and silent as the pixilated distortion rippled into his torso, then coursed down through every limb and scrambled the entirety of his code into scattered fragments.

It was the first time in his life that Ralph had ever personally experienced a glitch . . . but before he could fully take in the magnitude of the horrifying sensation, he was already feeling something else that was much more familiar.

There was a blipping sound, a fizzle of binary . . . and then, all of a sudden, he was falling.

He was falling, and somewhere above him - shrinking rapidly into the distance - Vanellope was screaming.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Mike's arms were beginning to weaken, her knees shaking with the effort of keeping the blue tentacle stretched away from the surface of Vanellope's program. The _thing _squirmed and shrieked ever more violently, and finally it began to overpower her. Her shoulders hunched and she let out a desperate groan of effort of as the virus began to inch back down to the code box, strengthening its parasitic grasp on the glitching surface.

An instinct screamed frantically in Mike's head, and she didn't take the time to stop and question it.

Tightening the grip of her left hand around the wriggling body of the virus as much as she possibly could - so tight that the tips of her fingers almost dug into its porous exterior - Mike let go of it with her right, reached into the neck of her smock, wrenched out her paintbrush, and slashed down at the remaining ligaments attaching the virus to Vanellope's code.

There was a flashing streak of hot, magenta paint . . . a blinding flare of electricity . . . an ungodly, garbled shriek and spastic writhing from the thing still clenched in her left hand . . . and the next thing Mike knew, she and the virus were both separated from the code box and drifting away from it, spinning backwards in multiple somersaults from the momentum of the expulsion.

As they spun together, the lithe body of the virus suddenly spiraled itself around Mike's arm and made a wild, snake-like lunge at her chest. It phased through the barrier of her clothes and skin, then began to sink straight into her body like water into a sponge, as if it had no more substance or solidity than a beam of light.

Mike's eyes bugged and her mouth opened in a silent, breathless scream, but before she could feel so much as a twinge of terror, her entire conscious being was transported to and entirely consumed by a flash of unbidden memory, playing like a highlight reel on the screen of mind and all but numbing her to the sensation of the virus as it bored its way inside of her . . .

_She was in her studio . . . . and it - the thing with many legs, the glowing blue creature that had come out of the tunnel on the right - it was there with her . . . . and it was coming towards her._

_The only thing she had time to register as it crashed down on top of her was that the monster had no skin, no solid exterior she could touch. Her outstretched hands seemed to melt into the creature as it landed on her . . . she felt nothing except a sudden, consuming heat and the waves of electricity coursing through her body. _

_Everything around her went white . . . a claustrophobic, swallowing whiteness that clouded not only her eyes, but her ears as well . . . and for one jarring, agonizingly slow moment, she was completely blind and deaf, groping the air in front of her but finding nothing to hold onto. The heat and the electric shock grew doubly intense, seeming to concentrate in a smaller and smaller point of impact directly over her chest, until all she could feel was a sensation like a white-hot cannonball being driven straight into her heart. _

_It pushed against her, harder and heavier and hotter until she was certain her entire being was going to be crushed into a singularity beneath the electric force . . . . and then, all at once, it was as if the cannonball evaporated in a burst of dissolving energy, sending a final shock wave resonating out of her and expanding through the room, knocking things off the shelves and then vanishing._

The memory reel abruptly stopped. Mike's eyes shot open and she sucked in gasping breath.

She wasn't in her studio. She was still spinning slowly through the weightless void of the Sugar Rush code room, surrounded by countless glowing boxes and their pulsing connectors. Her Battle-strokes brush was still clasped in her right hand, and now drifting far away from her - and growing slowly farther by the second - was Vanellope's code box, no longer flashing with glitches and no longer latched onto by the tentacle of the virus.

_The virus._

Mike breathed in another horrified gasp and looked at her chest, feeling it frantically with her empty hand . . . but there was nothing there, no sign of the virus's entry. It was gone.

She was moving . . . something was dragging her backwards through the network of code. Still reeling and struggling to come to grips with the inexplicable thing she had just experienced, Mike looked back over her shoulder and realized that it was the licorice tether still tied tightly around her waist that was pulling her. After another few seconds, she suddenly came to the end of the program cluster and was drifting through open, empty blackness again . . . and not far away, she could see the bright white circle of the exit, and inside it, Sour Bill's little silhouette as he anxiously towed her back toward the light.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

For one infinitesimal fraction of a second after she watched Ralph glitch through the balcony and begin plummeting down to the distant ground below, Vanellope stood rooted to the spot, paralyzed with horror.

Then, that fraction of a second passed . . . and before she could even begin to process her own conscious effort to do so, she had sprinted forward, dove headfirst off of the balcony after him, and - with absolute intention and total control - glitched herself down to catch up with him as he was falling. It was only when his eyes turned up to meet hers that she realized she had been screaming his name the entire time.

"RALPH! _GIVE ME YOUR HAND!"_

The wind was whistling in her ears so sharply that her own voice sounded tiny and far away . . . but Ralph immediately obeyed, reaching up and closing one hand around her as the ground beyond him rushed up ever more rapidly to meet them.

The instant she was in his grasp, Vanellope closed her eyes and glitched.

The pull of reversing momentum was so strong it almost gave her whiplash. The only thing she could think to compare it to was the sensation she imagined she might experience if she were to deploy an enormous drag chute while driving her kart at absolute top speed. The glitch scattered the two of them together into a cloud of pixels, then reassembled them again in midair halfway back up to the balcony - and from there, they immediately began to fall again. Vanellope clenched her teeth and glitched them up again . . . then again, and again, fighting continually against the ceaseless demand of gravity, until finally, with one last burst of binary distortion, they found themselves dropping once more onto the hard, solid surface of the balcony.

Vanellope's eyelids fluttered weakly open. She was lying on Ralph's stomach, with his hand still gripped tremblingly around her, and he was sprawled on his back on the white chocolate terrace, blinking straight up at the sky with his mouth open and gasping disbelievingly as if comprehension hadn't yet caught up with him.

The last thing she was aware of was the staggering revelation that the involuntary glitches had finally stopped . . . and then, a wave of utter exhaustion overwhelmed over her so swiftly powerfully that her eyes rolled in their sockets, and that very instant she dropped her head down onto Ralph's chest in a blissful swoon of unconsciousness.


	37. Chapter 36: Make Them Sweet Instead

**A/N; **Hello, everyone! Long time, no see! I apologize exceedingly for the long wait on this chapter . . . between work, travel, and some other personal matters, I've had very little time or energy in my life for fanfiction lately. But fear not! The updates may become a little bit farther and fewer in between, but I promise that they WILL keep coming. I've gone too far with the Frankenbeast not to finish it now.

On another note, I think that you really will not get the full impact of this chapter unless you go to YouTube and listen ( if you haven't heard it already ) to Rockleetist's English cover of "Sugar Rush," which is where I got the English translation of the lyrics for this chapter. Rockleetist's voice is **amazing, **and I like her cover for the song almost as much as the original. Seriously, go check it out.

An illustration for this chapter will also be posted soon on my dA. Enjoy, everybody!

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 36: . . . Make Them Sweet Instead_

For the tenth time in as many minutes, Mike drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out again in a long, anxious, frustrated sigh, absently swirling the mug in her hand and staring down into its thick, steamy contents. The candy-corn butler who had pushed it eagerly into her hands a little while ago ( while a second attendant simultaneously draped a pink blanket over her shoulders ) had called it "cocoa," and told her it would "help perk her up" . . . it smelled quite pleasant, but she hadn't yet been able to bring herself to drink any of it.

She was much too worried about Ralph and Vanellope.

_The instant Sour Bill finished pulling her out of the Sugar Rush code room and her feet had landed once more on the solid, gravity-bound floor of the narrow entryway, they hadn't exchanged more than a single glance of explanation before bolting back down the corridor. They took off so quickly that Mike forgot to slip the licorice-noose back over her head, and didn't remember until she'd rounded the corner and been abruptly yanked back by a sharp pull around her waist. _

_Sour Bill didn't notice, and kept waddling at top speed back toward the throne room . . . Mike caught up with him easily enough once she'd disentangled herself from the tether, but by the time they'd reached the bottom of the spiral staircase and begun ascending toward the second floor, she was beginning to feel strangely fatigued and woozy. She practically had to drag herself up the last few steps, and when they came to the end of second-floor hallway, one of her legs trembled and promptly gave out. Mike dropped to one knee, breathing hard, and it was only then that Sour Bill took notice of her again._

_" . . . Michelangela?" he murmured, hesitantly skidding to a stop a few paces ahead and turning back to her. "What's wrong?"_

_Mike shook her head and quickly staggered back to her feet, swaying dangerously._

_"N-nothing . . . I'm fine. Vanellope . . . Ralph . . . we have to find them . . . "_

_Sour Bill looked momentarily torn between the urgent desire to do exactly that, and the reluctant concern that if he didn't do something for Mike, she might collapse on the floor at any second . . . but the tension didn't last long, because at that precise moment the two of them suddenly became aware of a jostling, pattering sound growing louder and closer, and then a veritable miniature torrent of assorted candy people came bursting up the staircase and down from the opposite end of the corridor, flooding the hallway they were standing in from wall-to-wall. _

_Mike's eyes narrowed dizzily at the small sea of brightly colored castle attendants crowding around her feet, none of them much taller than her knees. All of the candy servants seemed to be trying to talk to Sour Bill at once, the clamor of their squeaky voices filling the hall with a high-pitched, chaotic din._

_" - were glitching every which way, and nothing we could do about it!"_

_" . . . ended up in the root beer cellar . . . "_

_"I was dropped straight into the moat!"_

_" . . . until finally, it just stopped!"_

_"What about President Vanellope? Has her glitching stopped too?"_

_"Yes, Madam President! Where is she!?"_

_"QUIET! Everybody just calm down!" Sour Bill finally shouted, silencing the group with a sharp glare of his green eyes. He lifted one nubby hand and began motioning to various clusters of candy people while barking orders in an authoritative voice. "Ok, listen up . . . sentry suckers, fan out and start searching the castle for Wreck-it Ralph and the Madam President . . . if we're lucky, they'll be in the same place. Candied courtiers, you do the same! Assorted staff, check the grounds for any stranded characters and make sure all glitches have stopped . . . malted-messenger balls, head down to the Royal Raceway and the town to make sure the racers aren't panicking and to inform them of the situation . . . . and the rest of you? Take care of HER!"_

_With his last order, Sour Bill pointed over the heads of the other servants straight at Mike, and her eyes widened as no less than a dozen butlers of various candy-types all turned to look at her simultaneously. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could get a single word out the crew of candy people had swept her clean off her feet and were carrying her away down the hall, while Sour Bill and the rest of the castle staff erupted into a frenzy of activity. The last thing she saw before being whisked helplessly into another room was Sour Bill opening a door, starting abruptly with a horrified look on his face, and then darting inside . . . but before she could call out to him, the graham cracker door was shut behind her, and she found herself sequestered away in a quiet, white-frosted sitting room, being waited on by a baker's dozen of candy butlers._

And it was in that quiet, sweet-smelling, maddening place that she was still sitting when, almost half an hour later, the door at last cracked open again and Sour Bill stuck his head inside.

_"Finally!" _Mike exclaimed, bolting to her feet and inadvertently throwing both the blanket and mug of cocoa down on the floor. The wooziness she'd felt after exiting the code room had long since worn off, and she was brimming over with more anxious energy than she would have believed possible after the morning and previous sleepless night she'd been through. "Well? How are they doing?"

Sour Bill narrowed his eyes in a dour look and pushed the door open the rest of the way.

"President Vanellope and Wreck-It Ralph are resting in separate chambers. The glitches have stopped . . . but the ordeal has left both of them very weak, _especially _the Madam President. We shouldn't disturb either of them until they've had more time to recover."

Mike breathed a gasping sigh of relief and closed her eyes for a moment with one hand held over her gratefully throbbing heart . . . then looked up again, knitting her brow at Sour Bill in a pleading stare.

"Please . . . can I see them? Just for a minute?"

The green sourball gave her a stern, reluctant glower, hesitated for a moment, then stepped out of the doorway with a disapproving exhale.

"You can look in on them quickly . . . if you must_. _Whatever you do, just _be quiet."_

Mike nodded readily in obedience, and the candy butlers who had been standing in an attentive circle around her parted courteously out of her way. As she stepped out of the sitting room, Sour Bill gestured silently several yards down to where she could see two doors set nearly just beside each other on opposite sides of the corridor. Both were hanging just slightly ajar, and through the one on the right a shaft of bright, warm light was peeking into the dimness of the hallway.

Mike tip-toed toward the two doors as swiftly as she could without making any noise. The door on the left was plain and unassuming, but the one on the right was ringed all around with decorative frosting patterns and glimmering jewel candies, and on the floor in front of it was a cookie-sandwich doormat with the pun _Presidential Sweet _written on it in white piping. She turned instinctively to the door on the left first.

Still hardly daring to breathe, Mike grasped the doorknob, nudged the door half open as slowly and silently as possible, and peered inside.

The sight that greeted her was so relieving and simultaneously bittersweet that she automatically covered her hand with her mouth . . . whether to keep herself from giggling or crying, or both, she wasn't quite sure.

The spare bedroom was small, warm, and almost dark, with curtains drawn over the windows and sunlight struggling through them in a diffuse pink glow. On the left wall of the room was an empty bed, and on the right wall, sprawled comfortably over what looked like an heaped-up amalgamation of several sponge-cake sofas ( probably thrown together in haste because the bed was too small for him ), with his arms dangling down and trailing on the floor, was Ralph.

He wasn't awake . . . but he didn't seem to be wholly asleep, either. His eyes were closed and his expression blank, and his chest was slowly rising and falling with rhythmic breaths . . . but notably absent was the sound of his deep-throated snoring, which Mike distinctly remembered had punctuated every moment of his unconscious sleep the night she'd spent in his cottage in Fix-It Felix Jr. But it didn't matter . . . . it was enough to know that he was safe, that he was alright.

_Thank goodness . . . thank __**goodness **__he's alright._

Mike watched Ralph silently for another short moment, a wistful smile tugging gently at the corner of her mouth . . . then, without making a sound, she stepped back and carefully eased the door nearly shut again, leaving it just barely ajar so as not to jostle the doorknob.

She took a calm, steadying breath . . . then turned around to face Vanellope's door.

Upon quietly pushing it open and looking inside, the first thing that greeted her was bright, pervading sunlight, filling the enormous presidential suite and making Mike squint for a few seconds. The bedroom was one disheveled array of soft, glittering pink and white, exactly the kind of bedroom one might have imagined would suit the nine-year-old sovereign of a candy-themed arcade game . . . . but for once in her life, Mike wasn't interested in taking in the aesthetics of the new place. She didn't even cast a second glance at the breathtaking view of the Sugar Rush landscape that was visible through the open French doors on the other side of the room.

Her eyes were fixed instead, unblinkingly, on the tiny figure huddled on the large, heart-shaped canopy bed in front of her, curled up on her side beneath a pink blanket with only her dark ponytail peeking out over the pillow. Her back was to the door.

For a long, baited moment, Mike just stood there silently leaning half inside the room, watching Vanellope with a choked, unfamiliar feeling rising up her throat.

Then . . . without at all understanding why she was doing it . . . Mike abruptly found herself stepping over the threshold, into the warm light of the room, and closing the door softly behind her.

Her bare feet padding noiselessly on the thick carpet, Mike took a few calm steps closer to Vanellope's bed . . . then a few more . . . then a few more, until all at once she was standing right beside it and looking down at the still, sleeping shape of the little girl curled up tightly beneath the blankets. Even though Mike couldn't see her face, she suddenly felt gripped with the same sense of tender admiration as when she had met Vanellope for the first time, just a few short days ago . . . which, after all that had transpired between the two of them since, she had almost forgotten.

_"Ralph, she's . . . she's __**beautiful! **__She's the most adorable thing I've ever __**seen**__! She's like the children who play my game, only . . . only I can touch her, I can talk to her! Oh, Ralph, I've . . . I've __**so **__wanted to be able to talk to a child . . . to really talk to one, just once, ever since I found out they existed . . . . "_

As the memory of the things she'd said that night echoed in the back of her mind, Mike found herself softening her eyes down at Vanellope and hooking one corner of her mouth in a half-smile that was as ironic and melancholy as it was warm with fondness.

_. . . and then, scarcely twenty-four hours after that . . . now that she finally had a genuine, sweet, vivacious little girl to talk to . . . what had she done?_

_She'd let Vanellope's best friend be bullied, insulted, and beaten up by that creep Johnny Cage . . . . then had the nerve to get into a shouting match with her about it._

_"Creep or no . . . Johnny was __**right **__about one thing. Y-you . . . you and Ralph __**do **__try to make my decisions for me, and . . . you know what? I don't __**like it**__!"_

Mike's self deprecating smirk sharpened, her eyelids lowering sadly as she remembered one of the last things Vanellope had said to her before storming away from the altercation . . .

_"I don't care how long you've been plugged in, and I don't care if you have a __**glitch**__ . . . it's __time for you to start thinking about someone besides your__**self**__!"_

The words seemed to sting as freshly as if Vanellope had just uttered them aloud for a second time, and all of a sudden, Mike found that her eyes were starting to grow cloudy. Her face wrenching in a grimace of sadness and abrupt, startling realization, she turned around and dropped down slowly to sit on the edge of the bed with her back to Vanellope.

_After she'd seen Ralph's home and apologized to him for the incident with Johnny Cage, Mike had thought she'd seen all the truth there was to see in Vanellope's accusation, and made up for it. Of course she'd been being selfish at the Street Fighter party . . . but she'd said she was sorry. And she hadn't hurt anyone besides Ralph . . ._

_. . . . had she?_

_No._

_She had._

Mike glanced anxiously over her shoulder at Vanellope, then quickly turned her gaze back down to the floor between her feet.

_Of course. It was so obvious now. How could it have taken her this long to understand?_

_The way Ralph had gone running frantically out of his game the second he heard that Vanellope was in trouble . . . . the way Vanellope had chewed her out after being so cruel to him at the fight party . . . ._

_Vanellope hadn't turned against her because she was hateful, or mean-spirited, or because she was just being childish, or any of the reasons Mike had let herself believe . . . it wasn't even because she was simply jealous._

_It was because she'd been __**afraid**__ . . . . afraid of losing the person who Mike now saw meant more to her . . . as she did, to him . . . than anything else in the world. _

_"Mike . . . " he had said to her, on the night he introduced them, " . . . I'd like you to meet somebody very special to me."_

_Special? The word didn't say enough. Maybe Ralph didn't even have a word to explain how much Vanellope meant to him. They were more than friends, more than __**best **__friends . . . more than a surrogate brother and sister, even more than daughter and father-figures. They were just . . ._

_. . . Ralph and Vanellope._

_And then . . . __**she'd**__ come along._

Mike squeezed her eyes shut and dashed her fingers over them, wicking away the budding moisture before it could accumulate into tears. She took a deep breath and looked up, scanning her gaze around the cheerful room and searching desperately for something to distract her from the guilt that was sinking heavier and heavier against her heart . . . when suddenly, something faint and familiar drifted past her ears, a happy strain of music floating in through the open doors on the other side of the room so quiet and distant she hadn't even noticed it until that moment . . .

_Donna michi datte . . . . massugu janai darou . . . ._

Another half-laughing, half-crying gasp almost escaped her lips, and Mike smiled in spite of herself as she recognized the opening chords of the Sugar Rush theme song, and was immediately transported back to the first time she'd heard it.

Almost without realizing it, she began mouthing the Japanese words silently to herself in time with the music . . . but just before reaching the chorus, she remembered with a faint twinge of interest what Ralph had said about none of the Sugar Rush characters even speaking Japanese. The song continued just barely audibly from outside the castle, and Mike narrowed her eyes thoughtfully down at the floor as she worked to translate the lyrics in her mind . . . then opened her mouth and - completely forgetting Sour Bill's orders to be silent and un-disturbing - began singing softly to herself.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_"Every road that leads you . . . every single turn that you can make, may not always be perfect . . . winds you up, spins you out, you can't catch a break . . . . "_

Vanellope narrowed her brow thoughtfully in her sleep. She waited another moment, then hesitantly flickered her eyes open, squinting as she adjusted to the beam of sunlight falling across her face from the window.

But no . . . she must not have been _quite_ asleep yet, because she soon realized that the soft, timid voice wasn't singing in her head - as she'd first thought - but rather somewhere very near her in the room. Still feeling weak and disoriented from the nightmare of her glitch malfunction, Vanellope rubbed one eye with the heel of her hand and rolled irately onto her back to see what dunderhead had decided to intrude on her recuperation . . . and froze, her eyes widening in silent disbelief at the back of a wild, curly mane of hair too distinctive not to recognize immediately.

Mike was sitting on the edge of her bed, with her back turned to her, staring listlessly off into space and singing quietly, more to herself than anyone else.

_"And maybe sometimes, life's not what's you wanted, and . . . track is rough, and the road goes on for miles ahead . . . . "_

As the shock of Mike's appearance quickly drew her further and further out of the haze of exhaustion she'd drifted into, the song she was singing abruptly registered in Vanellope's mind and made her eyes grow even wider. The strange lyrics had somehow managed to make a tune which she'd heard every day of her life - which she'd heard so many countless times before, she had finally stopped hearing altogether - sound foreign to her . . . . but she recognized it instantly as soon as Mike reached the unmistakable bars building up to the chorus.

_" . . . when your thoughts turn sour, make them sweet instead . . . S, U, G-A-R, jump into your racing car, say Sugar Rush . . . Sugar Rush . . . . "_

She didn't sing the entire refrain, but held off until the start of the second verse, nodding her head privately in time with the rhythm and whispering inaudibly under her breath . . . and it was then that Vanellope realized she was still actively translating the lyrics in her head.

_"Everybody has a bad day . . . every racer has a day when they lose the race . . . close your eyes, it's getting better . . . don't let go of your dream of winning first place . . . "_

Suddenly, without warning and for no apparent reason . . . Vanellope found herself choking on unshed tears. She held perfectly still with baited breath, listening to Mike's lilting voice with the sting behind her eyes growing sharper and more bewildering, until all at once, she knew why the song was affecting her so.

_Every day . . . every single day of her entire life, she had listened to that song, listened and listened until it was practically etched into her code, until she knew every last note and syllable by heart . . . . _

_. . . . but this was the first time that she had ever understood what the words of the song were actually saying. _

Her heart pounded, and a flood of unbidden remorse welled up inside of her as she stared silently at Mike's back.

_" . . . and maybe sometimes, our engine stalls a little while . . . it won't stop you from crossing the line up ahead. When your thoughts turn sour, make them sweet instead . . . . S - "_

"Hey."

Vanellope's voice issued out in a tiny, whispering croak, but it was still enough to make Mike immediately stop singing and jump nearly three inches off the edge of the bed. She whirled around to face Vanellope with a wild, frantic look in her eyes, her face reddening like a tomato.

"V-Vanellope!" she cried hoarsely, holding her hands in midair as if unsure whether or not she should make a desperate bolt for the door. "I . . . I . . . I thought you were sleeping!"

Vanellope didn't say anything. Instead, she just shook her head and sat up slowly, hunching forward with her eyes glued sheepishly to the bedspread.

There was a long moment of awkward, pregnant silence.

Her freckled cheeks still flushed pink with embarrassment, Mike finally shifted her gaze aside and spoke up in a hesitant stammer.

"So . . . are you, uh . . . f-feeling alright, now? No more glitching?"

Vanellope shook her head again, feeling so guilty and miserable that she couldn't even bring herself to look Mike in the face as she muttered,

"No . . . and . . . it's thanks to you, isn't it?"

Mike jumped slightly and turned a brighter pink again, but Vanellope continued before she could say anything.

"Ralph told me you went into the code room to stop whatever was causing it, and . . . then it stopped. So I guess . . . you kind of saved my life."

Mike held her mouth open soundlessly for a moment, then held up her hands and began protesting fervently.

"What? No, _no, _nothing like that . . . I just . . . I was the only main character around, see, so it _had_ to be me, and of course I couldn't let you just . . . you know . . . it was nothing_, _really . . . Ralph was the one who - "

"Oh . . . _Ralph!"_ Vanellope gasped suddenly, her heart shooting into her mouth and her eyes darting anxiously towards Mike. "I almost forgot! Where is he? Is he o_kay!?"_

"Don't worry, don't worry, he's _fine. _He's in the next room, resting."

Vanellope breathed a weary sigh of relief and slumped her shoulders again.

"He was trying to help me, and he caught the glitch for a minute before you stopped it . . . he's not used to glitches . . . I was afraid it might have really hurt him."

Mike smiled and softened her eyes reassuringly. "He's okay, Vanellope, I promise. And . . . besides . . . Ralph knew perfectly well that he might get hurt trying to help you. He didn't care."

Vanellope paused . . . then looked up slowly in disbelief. She had never heard Mike's voice take on that heavy tone before. It was almost as if she felt _she _was the guilty one. Their eyes met, and Mike's smile grew bigger and sadder.

"You should have seen him . . ." she went on, glancing away with a light chuckle. " . . . the way he went tearing through Game Central Station, the second he found out you were in danger. It was like he forgot anything else existed . . . it was all I could do just to keep up with him. I've never seen him so worried . . . so _scared."_

Mike hesitated . . . then, something in her eyes changed, and her smile vanished completely.

"Vanellope . . . I . . . I want to tell you . . . that I'm sorry."

Vanellope's eyes bugged. _"You're _sorry? For what?"

Mike winced lightly, apparently mistaking her incredulity for a sarcastic accusation . . . but before Vanellope could correct her, she went on in a quiet, apologetic tone.

"For . . . for not understanding sooner, about you and Ralph. About how important you really are to each other, and . . . and how I'd come between you. I thought you were only treating me the way you did because you _disliked _me, but . . . I understand now. And I . . . I also wanted to apologize for the way I . . . the way I've been treating _you_. Personally."

She paused. Vanellope said nothing . . . her voice was caught in her throat with a disbelieving knot that was growing thicker by the second.

"Since the moment we met, I've been treating you like . . . like part of the scenery, just another pretty design to be admired. I never really stopped to think of you as a _person, _with your own ideas and feelings and . . . " Mike trailed off for a moment, then smirked sadly to herself. "I guess that's one of the problems with being an artist . . . I can get so wrapped up in how things _look, _that I stop thinking about what they really _are. _I think that's part of the reason why I can be so . . . _selfish, _sometimes. And that's why it took me so long to realize why you and Ralph are so protective of each other . . . and why you were so upset when I . . . came between you."

There were a few seconds of intense, heart-pounding silence, and then Mike suddenly lifted her head to look Vanellope in the face and leaned closer toward her on the bed.

" . . . but I want you to believe me, Vanellope . . . " she said softly, but seriously, " . . . when I promise you that no one, _no one . . . _especially not me . . . could ever take your place."

The knot in her throat burst apart and became the fragments of a sob that Vanellope could no longer keep down. Her shoulders began to tremble.

"Ralph . . . Ralph means more to me than anyone else in the world," Mike admitted in a shy whisper, her own voice sounding as if it were beginning to choke up. "But I see now, that . . . no matter how close he and I may grow . . . . you'll always have a place in his heart that I could never fill."

She leaned in even closer, scooting further onto the bed and gently putting her hand down on the blanket just a few inches away from Vanellope's.

_"Never," _she whispered again.

Vanellope raised her head, and a for a split-second, they just looked at each other . . . then, her expression crumpling into a single cry and her eyes finally welling up with tears, she wrapped her arms around Mike's waist and buried her face in the soft folds of her shirt.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Mike's eyes popped and she went rigid with surprise as Vanellope unexpectedly threw herself at her and hugged her so tightly that for an instant, it took her breath away. Not knowing what to do, she sat there paralyzed in shock with her arms hovering at her sides until, after a surreal moment of silence, she realized that Vanellope was saying something, the words half-muffled into her chest but still discernible in between her small gasps and shudders. She was crying quietly as she spoke.

_"I'm sorry."_

Mike stared down, dumbfounded, at the candy-speckled crown of dark hair under her chin.

"Va . . . Vanellope, what are you - ?"

"I'm sorry . . . I'm sorry, I'm _sorry!" _the little girl wailed, tightening her fingers in Mike's smock. "I've been such a j-jerk to you, ever since we met . . . I n-never . . . never even gave you a real _chance . . . "_

Mike furrowed her brow in a confused, but genuinely touched frown, and gently lowered her hands to rest comfortingly on Vanellope's back.

"That's not true," she said softly. "You introduced me to your friends, you welcomed me into your game . . . you even organized that race for us . . . "

But even as she spoke, Vanellope shook her head fervently and hid her face further in Mike's chest.

"I didn't do any of that for you, I did it for _Ralph, _or . . . or at least . . . I _thought _I was doing it for him, but now, I . . . I . . . oh, I don't _know!" _she cried miserably. "Maybe . . . m-maybe, I did it because . . . deep down . . . I wanted it to go _wrong."_

Mike was silent for a moment . . . but she didn't remove her hands from Vanellope's shoulders.

"Do you mean . . . like the way you wanted my fight with Nina Williams to go wrong?" she asked gently.

Vanellope nodded and sniffed.

"Uh-huh. I told myself I was doing it because Ralph liked you, and I wanted him to be happy, but . . . I guess I was really just hoping it would end badly, so . . . s-so he and you wouldn't . . . so _you _wouldn't . . . w-wouldn't . . . "

Mike's frown softened.

" . . . so I wouldn't take him away from you."

Vanellope stifled a final cry into her shirt and then loosened her hold on her, sitting up straight and wiping her nose with her sleeve as she hung her head.

"And you think _you're _the selfish one," she quipped, a passing trace of her old wit and tenacity glinting through the pall of her teary-eyed misery. Mike couldn't help but smile at it.

"I guess when it comes to Ralph, you and I are _both _pretty selfish, huh?"

Vanellope smirked sadly. "Yeah, I guess so. Well . . . there's _one _thing we have in common, anyway, Chickadee."

The resurgence of the old nickname warmed Mike's heart and encouraged her even further.

"But you know that I could never _really _take him away from you, Vanellope," she repeated again firmly. "You _have _to know that."

The little girl nodded slowly, sniffling and wiping her nose again. Her eyes had dried, but they were still red-rimmed and downcast . . . though with every passing second of their conversation, Mike dared to believe she could see more and more sparks of her old, spirited self gradually working their way through her disheartened veneer.

"I do know that . . . now," she agreed thoughtfully. "But when it was all happening, I just . . . I don't know, I just got so _scared. _When Ralph told me that he wished he could find someone special, I promised to help him because I didn't want him to sulk anymore . . . I never really stopped to think about what would happen if he actually _found _her. And then he met _you, _and . . . and you made him so happy, and I . . . I started to be afraid he wouldn't need _me _anymore."

Mike smiled comfortingly, and before she realized what she was doing she had reached one hand up and tenderly brushed the bangs out of Vanellope's face . . . and Vanellope didn't stop her.

"He does need you, Vanellope. He always will."

The little girl look up at her, and - for the first time in what felt like ages - Mike saw the good old quirky, adorable, and slightest bit devious smile spread across her face.

"Yeah, but . . . you know . . . he needs _you _now, too."

The flush of warmth that flooded out from Mike's heart crept all the way up to her face and made her cheeks brighten again.

"Do you . . . really think so?"

Vanellope nodded, hooking her smile and raising one eyebrow knowingly.

"Trust me. I know that big ape better than anyone . . . and I can tell you sure as sherbet that he's got it _bad _for you, Chickadee."

Mike hunched her shoulders with a little squirm of embarrassment and smiled from ear to ear, but said nothing . . . they just looked at each other for a moment, with matching glints in their eyes, until suddenly there was a timid knock at the door.

_Bunk_, _bunk, bunk._

They both looked up, and Mike's already swelling heart gave a jubilant leap when she saw the door opening slowly and a familiar, hulking figure hunching over to squeeze through an opening that was nearly two times too small for him.

"RALPH!" she and Vanellope cried out happily in unison.

Ralph started sharply at their voices, and the moment he was successfully inside the room he straightened up and look at them with a blinking gape of surprise. For a few seconds, his eyes darted confusedly back and forth between them, a perplexed and slightly worried frown turning on his face.

"Vanellope . . . Mike!" he exclaimed, taking a few lumbering steps closer to the bed. "You're both . . . _here! _And . . . and you're both feeling okay?"

Mike and Vanellope exchanged rapid, almost secretive glances, then smiled up at him together.

"Yeah . . . I'd say we're both doing a lot better, now," Vanellope answered. "What about _you, _big guy?"

"Me? Ah, I'm fine . . . be doing a lot better once this crick in my _neck _goes away, though," he grimaced, massaging the muscle between his neck and shoulder with one hand. "You gotta get some bigger furniture in that guest room, kid."

Vanellope giggled and blew a short raspberry. "Sorry, my game wasn't designed for _gigantoids."_

Mike snickered in spite of herself, and Ralph rolled his eyes, but was obviously more pleased than annoyed.

There were a few seconds of peaceful, yet weighted silence . . . and suddenly, Mike felt another throb of situational understanding and stood up from the bed, shyly brushing out the wrinkles in her smock.

"Well, I'd . . . ah . . . I'd better head home, and give you two some more time to rest," she said matter-of-factly, shooting a furtive wink back at Vanellope.

"Are . . . are you sure?" Ralph protested lightly. "Maybe you should stick around a while . . . who knows what things are like in the station right now? And besides, you haven't told us what happened in the code room yet!"

"Oh . . . that can wait," she muttered hastily, the mention of the Sugar Rush code room triggering a pang of frightening recollection that she suddenly realized she had been suppressing for the past hour. "The arcade's shut down, remember? We'll have plenty of time to talk things over tomorrow, and anyway . . . I, ah . . . I'd really like to get back to Masterwork and rest a while, myself."

"You could rest _here_," Ralph murmured . . . but Mike just smiled sweetly and shook her head.

"I'll be fine, Ralph. I'll see you both in the morning, okay?"

He looked as if he wanted to argue further, but instead Ralph breathed a small sigh of resignation and held his arms open for a farewell hug. Mike eagerly stepped into them, and as the enormous appendages were closing around her, she peeked secretly over Ralph's forearm and caught Vanellope's eye, and the two of them exchanged a good-natured wink. Ralph squeezed her a bit tighter for a moment, the warmth of his heartbeat spreading into her, and just before letting go he hunched down to put his mouth beside her ear, and whispered in a voice so soft that only the two of them could hear it . . .

_"I knew you could do it, _Mike."

She squeezed her eyes shut and hugged his torso as tightly as her small arms were able.

Finally, they parted, exchanging one last significant look as Mike began moving slowly toward the door.

"I'll stay here tonight, and then come to see you in Masterwork first thing tomorrow morning . . . alright?" Ralph offered reassuringly. Mike nodded with approval, gave them both a smile of goodbye, and turned to leave . . . when suddenly, Vanellope's sharp voice made her stop.

"Wait a minute_, _Chickadee."

Mike looked back in surprise. Vanellope had tossed off the covers and turned to sit on the edge of her bed. Her face was frowning and hesitant, her cheeks slightly pink and her eyes narrowed with embarrassment, as if she would have preferred not to do what she was about to do with Ralph in the room, but was stubbornly determined to do it anyway. She looked Mike straight in the eye and held out her arms.

"Don't _I _get a hug?"

Mike's mouth dropped open, and she stood rooted to the spot in a combination of joy and disbelief for less than a quarter of a second before veritably bolting back across the room, flopping down onto the bedside and seizing Vanellope in her arms, squeezing her in the same close embrace she had secretly yearned to do every time she saw the little girl . . . only this time, Vanellope was actually hugging her back.

Ralph stared at them with his jaw hanging open, as flabbergasted as if they'd both just spontaneously sprouted wings and third eyeballs in front of him. They held each other tightly for a few seconds . . . before Mike let go, she worked up the courage to plant a single, soft, rapid kiss on the top of Vanellope's head . . . and then they parted again, smiling calmly at each other without exchanging another word. Mike stood up, paused beside Ralph to pat him once on the arm, then quietly left the room.

She hadn't taken ten steps down the dim hallway toward the stairs, however, until something inside made her stop and look back.

Maybe it was the delirious happiness that was overflowing inside of her and clouding her judgment . . . maybe it was plain, irreverent curiosity . . . or maybe, she just couldn't resist looking in secretly on the heartwarming reunion she knew was about to take place . . . but whatever the reason, Mike found herself tiptoeing silently back to the edge of the open doorway, flattening her back against the wall, and peeking around the corner so slightly that neither Ralph or Vanellope would have noticed her, even if they'd looked back in her direction.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As soon as Mike was gone, Ralph turned to look at Vanellope with an expression of utter incredulity . . . but at the same time, it was growing gradually more and more excited, as if the thing he almost dare to believe was too good to be true.

"Did . . . did I _miss _something?" he finally croaked out in a hoarse, half-smiling voice.

Vanellope almost burst out laughing, but managed to contain herself, instead just shrugging and rolling her eyes.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she muttered innocently.

Ralph snorted and plunked down on the edge of the bed beside her, his weight bowing down the sponge-cake mattress and making her lean against his leg.

"My _be_hind, you don't know! Last I heard, you claimed you _hated _Mike!"

Vanellope's grin vanished, and her spirits plummeted with the mention of their fight. She looked down at the floor, the playful tone of their conversation immediately stiffening.

"I . . . I know what I said," she muttered remorsefully, her voice barely above a whisper. "But . . . I didn't mean it. I didn't mean any of it. You were right, Ralph. I guess . . . I guess I really was just jealous."

There was a moment of strained silence. They didn't meet each other's eyes.

Ralph cleared his throat sheepishly.

"Well . . . it wasn't just you, Vanellope. Jealous or not, you . . . you had a right to be mad at me. I broke my promise to you, and then . . . _I'm _the one who lost my temper and said things I didn't mean."

Vanellope looked up at him, her heart starting to pound.

"So . . . you really don't like Mike better than me?"

He furrowed his brow apologetically.

"Of course I don't."

"And . . . we really are still best friends . . . aren't we?"

His mouth turned up in a gentle, serious smile.

"Of _course _we are, kid."

They looked at each other silently, and Vanellope pursed her lips and squinted her eyes to keep from crying again. After what felt like a long moment, but was really less than half a minute, Ralph let out a low chuckle and got down from the edge of the bed, kneeling on the floor in front of her and holding his hands out to her.

"C'mere, you little cavity queen."

If she'd had any tears left after everything that had happened that day, they would have fallen . . . but as it was, Vanellope just let out a dry, emotional cry and leapt into his arms. He folded her into the warm, protective shelter of his embrace, holding one hand over her head and resting the bridge of his nose on her temple. Vanellope trembled and gasped for a few seconds more, but she didn't cry again. Instead, she wrapped both of her arms around one of his and buried her face in it, and for a long, long while, they stayed there together on the floor.

"You know . . . you really gave me a scare today," Ralph said quietly after a moment.

"I know," she answered softly, nuzzling her cheek once on his arm. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It wasn't your fault."

She frowned worriedly and looked up at him. "Then . . . what _did _cause it, Ralph?"

He made a face and narrowed his eyes. "I don't know . . . but whatever it is, the same thing is happening all over the arcade. Felix came down with it this morning, and Calhoun had it last night . . . and I'm _sure _its the reason so many games went down and the arcade closed early today."

"Were Calhoun and Felix glitching, too?"

"Well . . . not exactly. For some reason, it seems like the malfunction affects everyone differently . . . it made Calhoun hallucinate she was being chased by cybugs, and it made Felix lose control over his hammering arm. And who _knows _what it's doing to everyone else."

Vanellope felt a light shudder of fear ripple through her, and she unconsciously held on to Ralph's arm a little tighter.

"Maybe we'll understand a little more when Mike tells us what happened in the code room," she suggested.

Ralph answered with a stilted silence that made her stop and look up. He was shifting his gaze uncomfortably.

" . . . Ralph? What is it?"

He hesitated again, breathing an uneasy sigh and moving around to sit with his back to her bed, repositioning her on his knees so they could face each other.

"Kid . . . listen," he said haltingly, and it was obvious that whatever he was about to say next, he absolutely did not want to say. "I've . . . I've been thinking about some of the things you said yesterday, and . . . I think you might be right."

Vanellope blinked. "What do you mean?"

"About . . . Mike. And the virus."

Her face went a shade paler and her stomach twinged funnily. "B-but . . . I only said all that because I was mad! I . . . I didn't really _mean _any of it!"

"I know, Vanellope, but . . . think about it. Everything you said, it's all starting to make _sense . . . _Masterwork, the lockdown, Mike's glitch and her memory lapses, and now all these _code _disruptions . . . look, I'm not saying I believe any of it for sure, but I think it's obvious that all of this has _something _to do with her and her game. None of these code malfunctions started until Mike left her game and started meeting people. I . . . I don't _like _it, but . . . but I can't deny that it's _possible _the virus is spreading through her somehow."

Ralph's voice was hollow, and Vanellope found herself desperately trying to think of arguments to counter the ones she'd made the previous day.

"But . . . that wouldn't make any sense!" she piped up eagerly the instant she thought of one. "If Mike were the one spreading the virus, then how is it possible that _you _haven't been infected, Ralph? You've spent more time with her than anyone!"

He made a face and shook his head.

"I don't know. That's one of the things I can't figure out. The only thing I know for sure is that all of this is connected, somehow . . . connected to Mike and her game."

There was a short, grave silence, and when Vanellope spoke again, her voice had gone as hollow as Ralph's.

"So . . . do you think we should . . . you know . . . _tell her?"_

"I don't want to . . . I've been trying as hard as I can to not even _say _the word virus around her, but . . . but now, I don't think we have a choice. We have to try and get to the bottom of this before things get any worse. Tomorrow morning, when I go to meet Mike in Masterwork . . . I'll have to talk to her about it, face to face."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Mike stood frozen outside Vanellope's door for just a few seconds after the sound of their voices grew quiet from within . . . then, with one hand pressing unconsciously over her chest - _over the place where the virus from Vanellope's code block had disappeared - _and the other clenched in a determined fist at her side, she turned away and began walking swiftly and silently down the corridor. She didn't stop when she reached the staircase, nor when she came again to the throne room, where Sour Bill and a handful of other castle servants were still earnestly discussing the days' events. They called out to her, but she ignored their voices and kept walking faster and faster, pushing her way out through the main palace doors and then almost breaking into a run down the royal highway leading back to the Rainbow Bridge.

Mike's face was set in a rigid, unyielding stare, her eyes hard and her heart hammering wildly in her chest.

_The terrifying images that had come to her in Game Central Station when she heard the word __**virus **__for the first time, and then again when she had grappled against the __**thing **__in the Sugar Rush code room . . . the inexplicable horror she had always felt connected with the tunnel on the right . . . her glitches, her missing memories . . . ._

_It was finally all converging upon her in a way she could no longer ignore, no longer pretend not to understand._

_There __**was **__something wrong with her. There always had been. _

_And now . . . now, it was threatening everything she had grown to love in her short life. __**Ralph**__ . . . Vanellope . . . Felix, and Calhoun . . . Sugar Rush, and Street Fighter, and Fix-It Felix Jr., and all of the other games in Litwak's arcade that she had never seen, but that she knew were full of living characters . . . not just code designs, not just works of art, but __**living **__people with thoughts and feelings and loved ones of their own . . . ._

_All of them were in danger now . . . and it was because of __**her**__._

Her brow beginning to perspire and her limbs growing weary from the effort of running uphill . . . but her nerve and newfound resolve never wavering for an instant . . . Mike paused as she reached the highest point of the Rainbow Bridge and looked back, casting her gaze breathlessly around the beautiful Sugar Rush landscape for what - for some reason - seemed like it might be the last time she would ever see it.

_For as long as she'd been alive, she had been secretly running from something . . . she realized that now. She didn't know what it was, but she knew now that it was the cause of everything that had happened . . . it was the wall around her mind, it was the glitch that distorted her memories, it was the thing that had come out of the tunnel on the right . . . and it was the thing she had fought in the Sugar Rush code room._

_It was time for her to stop running. _

_It was time to find the answers._

Mike turned her back on Sugar Rush, ran into the mouth of the dark tunnel that would lead her back to Game Central Station, and set her sights on Masterwork.


	38. Chapter 37: The Truth

**A/N: **Here it is, good people . . . . _prepare thyselves._

Illustration for this chapter is now posted on my dA!

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted concepts or characters mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 37: The Truth_

Although the atmosphere of Game Central Station had calmed down considerably from the chaotic frenzy it had been in earlier that day, there were still just as many - if not more - characters holding up in the transit area as before, milling about and postponing the inevitable, nerve-wracking return to their games by carrying on only half-hearted debates on their varying theories as to the cause of the code malfunctions.

This time, however, as Mike made her way through the crowd toward her gate, she didn't so much as flinch at any of the disturbing snippets of conversation that floated past her ears. Her head was down and her expression stony as she elbowed past character after character in an unwavering beeline, charging through the Masterwork portal and into the game tunnel at nearly a dead run. It wasn't until she was once more standing in the grass beneath the open, cloudless sky with the afternoon sun beaming down overhead that she finally stopped to catch her breath for a moment . . . but even then, the fierce glint of determination never left her eyes for an instant.

With her chest heaving shallowly and beads of sweat rolling down her temples, Mike stood up straight. She looked around her at the bright, peaceful surroundings of her game, letting her gaze linger solemnly for a moment - with a fleeting twinge of sadness - at the waves lapping softly on the shoreline . . . _she was __struck suddenly by the memory of the short, happy times she had spent horsing around with Ralph on the beach, or sitting with him as they watched the sunset _. . . and then, steeling herself once more against the dangerous pangs of sorrow and hesitation, turned to face the tunnel on the right.

The stone arch sat quietly, innocently in front of her, a faint breeze wafting past and rustling the long grass around its opening.

There was no other way. _If she was really going to find out the truth, once and for all . . . she was going to have to break her promise._

As she looked at it, an edge of hysterical fear began to dig sharply into her resolve . . . a fear so close and familiar that she wondered briefly if she had ever really gotten over it all, or only pushed it down into a deeper place where it was easier to ignore . . . and she knew that if she gave it even a moment longer, it would sink its purchase into her so tightly that she might lose her determination altogether. It was now, or never.

"I'm sorry, Ralph."

Mike clenched her fists, closed her eyes, and ran straight into the mouth of the tunnel without another second's hesitation.

_The tunnel on the right, the tunnel that led to that mysterious, alien place called the Internet . . . it was out of this tunnel that the __**thing**__, the glowing blue creature with many legs, had appeared on her second night in the arcade, the second night of her existence . . . . even though most of her memory from the incident was still blank and disoriented, of_ _**that **__much, she was absolutely certain. It had come to her, clear as day, in the Sugar Rush code room, just seconds before the virus on Vanellope's code box had delved its way inside of her . . ._

Even as she was running blindly through the warm darkness of the Internet tunnel, waiting to be pulled off of her feet and drawn toward the white space in between worlds, the very thought of the blue, lamprey-like virus vanishing into her chest sent a cold shudder of disgust rippling through her, and she had to swallow back another surge of dread that tried to compel her to retreat back into the safety and certainty of her game.

_No. She couldn't turn back now, no matter how much she wanted to . . . no matter how much she wanted to forget, and ignore, and pretend it wasn't so . . . she couldn't._

_Because it __**was**__. _

_Her glitch, her missing memories, the lockdown and the code disruptions, the thing from the tunnel and the thing leeching Vanellope's code . . ._

_" . . . the only thing I know for sure is that all of this connected somehow . . . connected to Mike and her game."_

_Ralph . . . ._

Mike's thoughts ground to a halt and her breath caught in surprise for only a second as she suddenly felt the same invisible force beginning to pull her steadily faster and faster forward into the blackness, her footsteps pedaling with increasing rapidity until soon she lost control of them altogether and found herself abruptly airborne. The sensation of hurtling along through total darkness under an unseen, irresistible hand of power - though familiar - was still quite frightening, and Mike had to squeeze her eyes shut and mutter to herself to keep from being overwhelmed by it.

"It's for them . . . it's for them . . . it's for _them . . . " _she whispered under her breath as her hair whipped wildly behind her head and her heart was pounding like drum. "Have to find the answers. . . have to find out what all this means, and put a _stop to it, _once and for all . . . "

But, no matter how many times she fervently repeatedly the mantra to herself as she was flying toward the rapidly approaching white light, Mike could never fully uproot the seedling of unspeakable dread that was budding continually larger and stronger, deep in the center of her consciousness . . . the dread of what those answers might actually _be_ when she finally found them.

And then, all at once, she was no longer flying toward the circle of white light, but had already rocketed through it and slowed to a gentle, drifting halt in the gravity-less white abyss she remembered from before . . . and there, not far off, was the same hovering gray screen that marked her entrance to the Internet itself. Mike swam eagerly toward it and phased through, taking in a deep, steadying breath and letting it out again as she found herself floating for a second time in the swirling, cosmic expanse of colored darkness, flashing lights, and limitless information.

_A world of limitless information . . . that was what this place really was, she was sure of it. Somehow, she had been sure of it since the instant she first laid eyes on it, and that was why she knew she had to return here to find the answers she was looking for._

For a short moment, Mike hovered carefully in place in front of the Masterwork portal and looked around thoughtfully at the endless sea of the Internet, watching the pinpricks of light go zipping back and forth and trying to calculate the most sensible way to begin her search.

_The blue creature . . . the __**virus**__ . . . it must have originated from this place, that much she knew . . . what she needed now was to find out just __**what **__it was, of what it was capable, and how to either destroy it entirely, or banish it back to this world from whence it had come. _

_The question was . . . how? _

Then, before she had time to ponder the matter any further, one of the gleaming flecks of light went shooting past her so suddenly that she yelped in alarm and darted back a few feet, turning an awkward backwards somersault in the air. She looked up again and threw the hair out of her face just in time to see the tiny ball of light go zipping off and phase into the nearest portal screen . . . the screen that opened into Litwak's office computer.

Mike's eyes popped, and her heart leapt with a great gasp of realization as she abruptly remembered . . . _with the same startling rawness of sudden clarity that she had felt earlier, both in Game Central Station and the Sugar Rush Code Room . . . _what it was she had caught a fleeting glimpse of on Litwak's desk, through the screen of his computer, before her glitch ( or, she realized with a grim shudder, more likely the _virus, _or at least whatever part of it might be attached to her like the lamprey on Vanellope's code box ) had unleashed the searing pain in her head and forced Ralph to retreat with her back into Masterwork. _It had been a sheet of yellow paper, a form on which she'd been able to make out the words of a sentence indicating that it was some kind of information or instruction regarding her game . . ._

_Of course! _Mike thought jubilantly to herself, setting her sights and thoughts on the nearby screen and shooting towards it like an arrow in slow motion, her mind racing eagerly as she went.

_That must have been why the thing in her head - glitch, or virus, or whatever it was - had attacked her at that moment . . . it was because she'd been about to learn something about Masterwork, maybe something that would have told her how to get rid of the __**thing**__! And maybe . . . just maybe . . . if she went back into Litwaks' computer, there was a chance that paper might still be on his desk, and if she could force herself to withstand the pain in her head just long enough to read it . . . ._

Her heart brimming over with desperate hope, Mike followed the path that the flickering speck of light had taken and zipped straight through the screen without even pausing . . . and less than a few minutes later, she had passed through the white zone, the dark zone, and the last stretch of unlit tunnel and come running out into the disquietingly still air and slick, clean floors of the inside of Litwak's computer.

Once she was safely inside it, however, Mike saw immediately that something in the computer was markedly different than before. The place was brighter and warmer, and the atmosphere seemed to be abuzz with a quiet, yet constant underlying current of energy that vibrated lightly beneath her feet and hummed in the empty air around her. Mike looked around suspiciously for a moment, then slunk silently to the vertical ledge rising in front of her and began to climb her way up.

Their first time here, Ralph had scaled up the twelve-foot wall - while carrying Mike in one arm, no less - in under ten seconds. It took Mike nearly five minutes to pull herself up along the handholds with her puny arms, and when she finally heaved the upper half of her body over the top, she was so short of breath that for half a minute she didn't even look up into the main chamber of the computer . . . when she finally did, however, what she saw made her suck in a sharp gasp of alarm and almost slide straight back down to the lower level.

Instead of a huge, dark, vacant room looming before her, the interior of Litwak's computer was now fully aglow with a steady white light, and hovering overhead like paper-thin banners suspended in midair were _screens_ . . . miniature screens, closely resembling the ones that floated in the Internet, but opaque instead of transparent . . . and instead of a flat, reflective gray, most of them featured colorful grid-like layouts with buttons and tabs and white space marked by writing, and all of them had matching blue headers at the top. There were at least a dozen of them hanging there, each perpendicular to the floor and parallel to the glass computer screen that looked out into Litwak's dim office.

Mike hung frozen on the ledge, her legs dangling down and her wide eyes nervously watching the floating screens, debating whether or not she should go forward or retreat back . . . but after a moment, when there was no movement from the screens and no sign of life from anywhere else in the enormous room, she swallowed her apprehension and climbed up to her feet. Taking a few cautious steps over to the middle of the glass wall, she checked hastily once more to make sure the office outside was empty. As soon as she was certain that Litwak wasn't there - even though he'd left his computer turned on - Mike eagerly pressed her hands and nose against the screen and began scanning his desk for the yellow sheet of paper . . . but after just few short seconds of searching, her spirits plummeted. Save for the keyboard and few odd pens and paper-clips, the desk space in front of the computer had been cleared off completely, and the yellow paper was nowhere to be found.

Bitterly disappointed and anxious, Mike threw her hands up with a frustrated growl and spun around in a dejected slump with her back to the glass . . . . and it was then that she happened to notice that the window hovering at the front of the stack was _blinking, _pulsing repeatedly with soft surges of light.

Intrigued, Mike took a step closer to the floating square and tilted her head back to peer up at the multiple lines of writing arranged in a list of long, narrow boxes down the center of it . . . and the instant her eyes ran across the label of the first box at the very top of the list, her heart jumped back into her throat, and her eyes bugged with an ecstatic gasp.

_**Re:**__ Some questions about recently purchased Masterwork console . . ._

Her hands practically trembling with nerves and excitement, Mike instinctively jumped up and made a wild grab at the bottom of the floating screen, hoping that if she could just touch it she might be transported to wherever the information was stored, the way that she had phased from one zone of the Internet to another through the gray screens . . . but to her surprise, when her fingertips grazed the bottom edge of the window, she found that it was not only perfectly solid, but that it stuck like glue to her hand and was immediately and effortlessly dragged down to her level, so that the flashing top box was now right in front of her eyes.

Mike blinked in surprise and took a short step back, quizzically studying the screen - which was about as tall as she was - for another moment . . . then, holding her breath without realizing it, she gingerly reached out and gave the glowing rectangle a short, experimental _tap._

Three things happened immediately.

The first thing was that the rectangle changed from white to blue, and then suddenly expanded into a large white window that nearly filled the whole screen, and was covered in writing from top to bottom. It was no longer a blinking line of text, but an entire _letter . . . _a letter written in light, and pasted clear as day on the vertical window in front of her.

The second thing was that the pain in her head erupted like a blaze of wildfire . . . and the third thing was that she realized, with an ironic shudder of victory, that the return of the pain could only signify that she had, in fact, come upon the very information she needed, and which the thing in her head was so desperately trying - and had tried before - to keep her from finding out.

_TTTSSZZZYYYEEIII!_

Immediately after the pain came the familiar, dizzying flash of blue light behind her eyes and the same horrific, electric screech that had assaulted her when she'd tried to read the yellow paper on Litwak's desk . . . . the only difference was that this time, Ralph wouldn't be there to save her.

_This time . . . she would have to do it on her own._

"Uggnnn . . . nnnhhn, aa_aaauugh!" _Mike squeezed her eyes shut and half-moaned, half cried out in suppressed agony as the splitting pain in her head grew heavier and sharper by the second. She balled her hands into fists and held them over her ears, and her teeth began to grind as she slowly dropped down to her knees on the smooth floor. The sweat started up on her forehead and temples again, and she felt as if her entire being were trying to curl up and twist itself into knots.

_TTTSSSZZZYY_YYEEEIII!

_"AAAUUGHHhaaaah!" _she let out a wretched wail and doubled over forward, pressing the crown of her head into the floor and arching her back. The pain was relentless, bearing down and down and down all around her like a physical weight, crushing her and yet at the same time pulsing unbearable surges of pressure against her skull from the inside.

Her lungs began to ache, and she realized abruptly that it was because she'd been holding her breath . . . she sucked in a ragged gasp, and had to force herself to breathe steadily in and out, in and out, concentrating hard on the rhythm and trying desperately to let it distract her from the blinding anguish and deafening screech inside her head, which had now somehow melded together to form a single entity of pain that simultaneously defied and overwhelmed any one of the physical senses. Less than a minute had passed, but the sensation was so intense that Mike felt as if she'd been curled up and cringing on the floor for half her life . . . she pushed harder on the sides of her head until her wrists trembled, the sweat now pouring down her face and dripping onto the floor . . . she didn't know how much longer she could stand it before she finally gave in to the encroaching darkness and collapsed in a dead faint . . .

TTSSYYZZZ . . . _ttszzeee . . . zyeee . . . ._

And then . . . all of a sudden . . . she opened her eyes, blinked, and sat up.

All at once, it was over. The pain hadn't disappeared completely . . . she could still feel it, whining and thrashing somewhere at the far back of her mind like a dying mosquito . . . but in one fell instant, as quickly as it had appeared, it had lost all but a fraction of its power, as if it had exhausted all of its energy in one desperate assault and was now almost entirely spent.

For only a short moment, Mike sat shaking on her knees and breathing hard, wiping the stinging perspiration from her eyes and pushing the matted hair off of her forehead . . . then, without wasting another second, she jumped up and began frantically scanning her eyes over the lines of text in the letter.

_**Re: **__Some questions about recently purchased Masterwork console_

_**From: **__Homer Ciro - Tobikomi__ Gaming Inc., Customer Service/Technical Support_

_Dear Mr. Stan Litwak . . ._

But before she had gotten past the first line, the pain suddenly began to build again, the whine growing louder with a dull stab like a needle pricking somewhere at the back of her head. Mike winced, and her mind raced wildly . . . until suddenly, she was struck with a desperate idea.

_The window had moved responsively with just a touch of her hand before . . . what if she could move it again? And what if she could move it __**further**__?_

Holding her head with one hand and squeezing one eye shut against the gradually strengthening jabs of pain, Mike pressed the other hand hopefully against the window and took a few steps back toward the ledge.

To her indescribable relief and delight, the window followed her . . . and not only did it follow her, but it abruptly shrank down to less than a quarter of its original size, so that it both stuck obediently to her hand and was of a convenient size for her to run with. It weighed virtually nothing.

Mike didn't wait for the pain to find its legs again. Gritting her teeth against it, she sat down on the ledge and jumped the twelve feet to the lower level, a sharp twinge shooting up through her feet as she landed . . . but she shook it off, and bolted straight for the exit with the message window in tow.

_The pain only seemed to have power over her while she was in the Internet . . . or had recently __**been **__in the Internet, at any rate. The last time, it had stopped altogether shortly after Ralph had gotten her back to Masterwork . . . it was only the ghost of chance, but maybe, if she could just get the letter back into her game with her, the thing in her head wouldn't be able to stop her from reading it again . . . . _

It wasn't until she'd almost reached the end of the white zone beyond the computer tunnel that the pain returned in full force, shrieking and grating with as much intensity as before . . . but this time, she was able to keep moving forward in spite of it, because she was once more drifting through the weightless void where thoughts and not physical motions were the force that propelled her along.

_Just have to get as far as Masterwork . . . just have to get as far as Masterwork . . . ._

So forward she went . . . cringing and whimpering and sweating as the pain railed and railed inside her head, but never once loosening her grip on the small window clutched in her hands, and never once letting her thoughts stray from the screen portal back into Masterwork.

She flew back through the computer portal and crossed the Internet without seeing any of it . . . she kept her eyes shut tightly and her arms wrapped possessively around the window until suddenly, she felt her forward momentum slowing to halt, and just a few seconds after that - to her gasping astonishment - the splitting pain vanished once more . . . and this time, it vanished completely, its strength and tenacity finally giving out altogether. She looked up, and saw that she was floating in the white zone between Masterwork and the Internet.

The relief was indescribable, but Mike couldn't stop to relish it even for a moment . . . nor could she stand to wait until she was back in Masterwork. This time, she didn't even pause to wipe the sweat off her face before holding up the message screen and brushing her hand across it to expand it back to its original size. Before it had even finished enlarging, she was hovering with her nose inches away from it and reading it out loud like a woman possessed, her eyes flashing and her voice muttering just above a whisper into the empty wide void around her.

_"Dear Mr. Stan Litwak . . . Allow me to apologize foremost for the tardiness of this reply to your inquiries. We have been having an exceedingly high number of very similar complaints from trial-purchasers of this particular game in all parts of the country, and it is our wish to address the individual concerns of as many valued customers as possible. In regard to your questions about your console, let me begin by briefly outlining the unexpected technical problems that have arisen with the entire PGC-Pr. 'Masterwork' line since its trial release . . . . "_

As she kept reading, Mike's voice slowly grew quieter and quieter, until at last it trailed off completely and she went on mouthing the words soundlessly to herself, her eyes widening and her brow knitting with disbelief.

_" . . . sincerely . . . . Homer Ciro, Head of Technical Customer Services."_

Mike finished the last line of the letter in a blank, breathless whisper . . . . and then, with a dead, numb sensation of absolute hollowness, drifted a few feet back from the screen and stared at it in silence.

And there she stayed, looking speechlessly at the words, for a long, long time.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

When Mike finally stepped back out of the tunnel on the right . . . with her shoulders slack, her feet dragging in the grass, and her eyes fixed unseeingly forward in an emotionless stare . . . the sun was already setting on the horizon, lighting the Eastern sky of Masterwork ablaze with brilliant washes of lilac and tangerine. But she didn't so much as glance at the magnificent sunset as she walked slowly - ever, ever so slowly - across the lawn up to her house, then came to a stop on the footpath and quietly lifted her gaze above the front door, above her second-story studio . . . and for one soft, silent moment, gazed up at the dark windows of the third floor.

_The third floor. The floor that she had never set foot in . . . the floor to which, for whatever unknown reason, she had never even once given so much as a moment's thought._

A gentle breeze was picking up, and far beyond her to the north, dim clouds were beginning to roll down from over the mountains. The wind wafted and played with the ends of her hair, but Mike didn't so much as shiver in the cool gusts. She looked quietly up at the third story for another moment . . . then calmly opened the front door and stepped inside. She climbed up the ladder, through the hatch, moved to stand in the center of her studio, and then turned around once in a slow, full circle, scanning every inch of the room with her eyes.

She had always had something of a vague notion of it hidden in the back of her mind, but now Mike was absolutely certain . . . there was no way to access the third floor of her house. No secret hatch, no hidden ladder or stairway . . . nothing.

It was as if neither she, nor anyone else, had ever been meant to set foot on the third floor at all.

As soon as she was entirely convinced of this, a sharp twinge of sorrow and dreaded expectation wrenched at Mike's insides . . . but apart from a slight narrowing of her eyes, she gave no outward sign of it. Instead, she crossed the room quietly and opened one of the front windows - the same window that Ralph, what felt like half a lifetime ago, had had to climb through to come into her studio - then crawled carefully up onto the ledge.

Once there, she braced herself with one hand on the frame and leaned halfway out into the open air, the wind picking up faster and faster each second and the warm light from the sunset sinking further and further beneath the horizon. Mike took the Battle-strokes brush from inside her smock, aimed carefully for a moment, and then -

_Htsszzing!_

_CKRAASH!_

A streak of black paint went whistling up into the air and burst straight through the nearest third-story window, shattering the pane and catching on the bottom of the sill like a grappling hook. Mike closed her eyes and put her head down as a small shower of broken glass rained down from above . . . then, she looked back up with a blank, dead-eyed expression, gripped the brush handle firmly with both hands, and began scaling up the side of the house.

A minute later, she was maneuvering herself carefully through the now-open frame of the window, breaking the paint-tether and tucking the brush back into her smock as she carefully avoided the jagged shards of glass. Finally, her bare feet padded down softly onto hardwood boards, and - for the first time - Mike found herself looking up into the dim, dusty shadows and swiftly fading sunbeams of the third floor.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

According to the candy-striped, softly ticking alarm clock on Vanellope's nightstand, it was just past nine o'clock on Tuesday morning when Ralph groggily blinked his eyes open and propped himself up on one elbow to squint into the yellow sunbeams pouring into the presidential bedroom. Ralph grunted half-heartedly, then opened his mouth in a great, gaping yawn, rubbing his face with one hand and wondering how anyone could stand living in a world of perpetual sunshine.

Peeling himself sorely up off of the makeshift bed of blankets and angel-cake mattress pads that had been arranged for him on the floor, the first thing Ralph did was glance over to check on Vanellope. He smiled when he saw that she was still curled up fast asleep under the blankets, her hair loose and fanned out in a messy tangle over the pillow. Her mouth was open, her breathing shallow and even.

Ralph would have liked to say goodbye to her before it was time for him to leave for Masterwork, but he immediately decided against waking her . . . the glitching ordeal the day before had left her mortally exhausted, and if anyone deserved to sleep in as late as she wanted that morning, it was Vanellope. So instead, he had to be satisfied with tucking the blankets more closely around her and gently running his fingertips a few times over her hair, brushing the bangs out of her forehead and smiling privately at her blank, peaceful expression. Then, he crept over to the door and quietly let himself out, shutting it behind him as noiselessly as possible.

As Ralph made his way leisurely out of the Candy Castle and down the lofted highway toward the Rainbow Bridge, he couldn't help thinking to himself - in spite of everything that had happened over the last couple of days, everything that was still happening now - that things were actually beginning to look up. He even found himself absently whistling along with the Sugar Rush theme song as he walked along the road.

True enough, he had spent most of the previous evening utterly dreading his inevitable conversation with Mike that day ( and Vanellope, exhausted though she was, had spent most of the evening trying to comfort and encourage him ) . . . but now, with the cheerful, sweet-smelling sun beaming down on him and the more horrifying aspects of his friends' respective code malfunctions seeming more and more like bad dreams long past, he was starting to hope that maybe - just maybe - their talk wouldn't turn out to be as disastrous as he'd been anticipating.

_After all . . . even if all of his worst fears turned out to be true, and Mike __**had **__unknowingly been spreading some kind of virus through the arcade . . . wouldn't it be better to just get it all out in the open, and start figuring out how to deal with it? Of course Mike would be frightened . . . maybe even a little bit guilty and heartbroken . . . but he would help her work through it. The sooner they confronted the problem head-on, the sooner they could remedy it, and start getting things back to normal. _

_He still didn't know all the details from Mike's trip into the Sugar Rush code room, but judging by her demeanor afterwards, it had proven relatively simple enough to expunge the virus from Vanellope's code . . . why shouldn't they be able to do the same thing for every infected character in the arcade? Then, once all the infections had been dealt with, they could investigate Masterwork's code room and eliminate the virus at its source . . . _

As Ralph was following this train of thought, an overwhelmingly happy idea suddenly occurred to him, and a huge smile spread across his face as he was making his way around the outskirts of the town and the Royal Raceway.

. . . _and then . . . once the virus had been eliminated once and for all . . . wouldn't that mean that Mike's glitch - or at least, what they'd __**thought**__ was a glitch . . . wouldn't that make __**it **__go away, as well? She'd finally have all of her memories again, and nothing to hold back the full potential of her mind . . . maybe she would even remember her back-story! They would at last know the answers to all of the frustrating mysteries about Masterwork that had kept them so puzzled and confused . . . and the two of them . . . maybe they would finally have a chance to spend some time alone together, time that was peaceful and quiet and free from worry . . . they could pick up where they left off before all the craziness began, go back to getting to know each other and starting a real relationship . . . maybe, Ralph would even have a chance at his first real . . . ._

A faint, brief flush of warmth crept up into his face as his thoughts began to stray toward bashful territory, and Ralph cleared his throat deliberately and kept walking. As he was passing by the last of the grandstands at the end of the Royal Raceway, he paused long enough to break off a sizeable chunk from a non-load-bearing beam of graham cracker ( one of the few things in the game he could bring himself to eat any real quantity of without feeling sick from sugar intake ) and munched on it pleasantly as he made his way toward the foot of the Rainbow Bridge.

_Yes . . . he could feel it. Today was going to be a good day. _

_Today, things were finally going to start turning around._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Careful, sweetheart, _careful!"_

"Oh . . . knock it off already, Felix, I'm _fine!" _Tamora grumbled irately, swatting away the hand he offered to her as the two of them stepped out of the shuttle onto the loading dock of the Hero's Duty anteroom, then headed toward Game Central Station.

Felix made a concerned face and hurried to keep up with his wife's brisk stride, insistently taking her hand in his and making her slow down to an easier pace alongside him.

"Now, honeybuns . . . _listen," _he reasoned firmly with her as they approached the gate. "Just because most of your symptoms have cleared up, that doesn't mean you shouldn't still take it _easy _for a little while. The last thing we want is for you to relapse!"

Calhoun rolled her eyes and blew the bangs out of her face with an exasperated puff of breath, then turned her gaze critically down at him.

"Yeah? And what about _you, _short stack? Shouldn't we be just as worried about _your _symptoms coming back?"

Felix sighed wearily. He knew it was only her worry and frustration talking, but nevertheless, his wife had been behaving even more bull-headed and stubborn than usual ever since the arcade had closed down unexpectedly the day before.

"The medic sedated my code _just the way _he did yours, dear . . . " he replied patiently. " . . . and _I _haven't experienced any of the weakening side-effects that you did . . . and neither have poor Janowitz or Markowski, for that matter . . . which can only mean that _your _code malfunction was - "

"Was _more severe than yours . . . _yeah, yeah, I _know," _Calhoun filled in for him with another annoyed eye-roll.

" . . . ex_actly! _Which means that even though we both need to be careful, sweetheart, _you're _the one who really needs to avoid any unnecessary . . . strenuous . . . exertion? Oh . . . jiminy, _jaminy . . . _would you look at that?"

Felix's voice trailed off into a stunned murmur as he and wife stepped through the Hero's Duty gate and got their first good look at Game Central Station since the whole crisis had begun almost twenty-four hours before. Calhoun's irritated scowl lifted immediately, and the two of them scanned their wide eyes across the transit area with matching expressions of grim amazement.

"I knew the arcade was _panicking_, but . . . " Tamora shook her head and muttered under her breath. " . . . I've _never _seen anything like _this."_

Game Central Station was so crowded with characters that at first glance, one could look in every direction and scarcely catch a single glimpse of the floor . . . but it wasn't just the sheer number of people filling the room that made the scene before them so distressing. On previous occasions when the station had become overfilled with characters fleeing their games for one reason or another, the crowds had been continually abuzz with nervous activity . . . mingling and talking and pacing and talking, and moving - always moving - trying to commune with as many other characters as possible to determine the cause of and potential solutions to whatever emergency had drawn them there in the first place.

But this time, the atmosphere in the station was different . . . disturbingly different. The thick crowd that Felix and Tamora were looking at had obviously been in the station since the moment the arcade had closed . . . and even more obviously, they had long since given up any hope of trying to learn anything more about the situation, let alone do anything about it. All but a sparse handful of the people in the room were sitting or lying on the floor . . . whether alone, or with their friends, or in random, scattered groups of strangers . . . looking for all the world like frightened war-time civilians huddled helplessly together in a bomb shelter, just waiting for the worst to occur. The surge protectors were nowhere to be seen . . . either something had happened to them again, or they had simply given up trying to maintain any semblance of order in the station.

Felix slowly took off his cap and rubbed the back of his head in dismal disbelief.

"Oh, my _land . . . _there . . . there has to be more than half of the entire arcade in here! Everyone must be too afraid to go back into their own games . . . "

"Too afraid of catching the _virus, _you mean," Tamora added in a low growl. "I _knew_ it, I knew it the _minute _they ordered that lockdown . . . there's been a virus quietly circulating through this arcade for _days, _now, right under our noses! Arrgh . . I'm such an _idiot! _Why, why didn't I just listen to my _instincts!?"_

"This is no time to start blaming yourself, Tammy," Felix said firmly, but gently. "First thing's first . . . I've got to find Ralph and the Nicelanders and make sure they're all okay. Knowing them, they probably abandoned our game before I'd been gone an hour . . . I just hope Ralph had the sense to stay with them!"

Calhoun shook her head doubtfully as the two of them began the agonizingly slow, tedious process of picking their way through the listless crowd of sedentary characters, searching the sea of downtrodden expressions for a glimpse of any familiar faces.

"Knowing that big pushover? Ten to one he went straight to Sugar Rush to check on the pipsqueak . . . . either that, or he's in Masterwork with Michelangela."

"Maybe the three of them are all together somewhere," Felix suggested hopefully, picking his way politely around the tangled legs and feet of the entire _Slam Dunk_ basketball team, huddled together near one of the information kiosks.

"Yeah . . . maybe_. _I just hope none of those nincompoops have gone and gotten themselves _infected."_

"Me too, Tammy . . . " Felix agreed, pausing to scan the faces around them and heaving an anxious sigh. " . . . but I'm afraid we won't know for sure until we find them."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph had just finished brushing the last of the graham cracker crumbs off of his mouth and the front of his overalls when he came out of the Sugar Rush tunnel and into the gray light of the anteroom . . . and he hadn't taken two steps down the short staircase before he noticed the dim silhouette of a small figure sitting in the plug passage. As soon as he reached the bottom of the stairs, his heart leapt into his mouth in a combination of surprise and excitement when he saw who it was.

_"Mike!"_ he blurted out enthusiastically with a short burst of laughter, waving one hand and hurrying toward her with a broad, pleasantly perplexed smile on his face.

Mike looked up at him as soon as he called her name, but she neither waved nor smiled back. She was sitting hunched over with her back to the smooth, golden wall of the passage, her knees drawn up to her chest and her hair falling in her eyes. She didn't even move until Ralph was halfway down the hall, and then she slowly pushed herself up to her feet, bracing herself with one hand on the wall as if she were almost too tired to stand. Ralph's smile vanished as quickly as it had come, and he began looking her worriedly up and down as he slowed to a halt in front of her.

He could tell immediately that something was wrong . . . _very _wrong. It didn't take more than a single glance up close for him to confirm that in all the time he'd known her, Mike had never looked worse . . . her normally pale face seemed to have gone even paler, with dark, heavy circles beneath her expressionless eyes - even the bright green orbs themselves appeared to have lost the gleam of their usual luster, and were staring at him like two pools of dead, stagnant liquid. Her face was devoid of expression, absolutely blank . . . and not blank in the peaceful or contemplative way that she sometimes looked, but blank with a kind of devastated weariness, a hopeless resignation of complete and utter defeat.

All of the optimism and high spirits that had filled Ralph's heart that morning instantly bled out of him, and he bent over Mike with his brow furrowed anxiously down at her.

"Mike . . . what is it? What's going on?"

She didn't say anything. He used his fingertips to brush the strands over hair out of her face so that he could see her better, and he gave her one light, gentle shake on the shoulder.

"Hey, hey in there!" he murmured, growing more anxious by the second. "Come on . . . talk to me, Mike! Tell me what's wrong."

For another moment, she made no reply . . . but slowly, silently lifted her hand up to touch his, never once breaking her constant, somehow sorrowful eye contact with him. She almost looked as if she was studying him, trying to commit every detail of his face to memory. When she finally spoke, her voice was so quiet and choked that he would have been certain she was crying, had he not been looking straight into her dry eyes with his own that very moment.

"N . . n-nothing's wrong."

"What are you talking about!? You look _awful, _Mike . . . how long have you been sitting here waiting for me?"

She hesitated, not as if she didn't want to answer him because of the particular question, but rather because at that moment, she would have preferred not to speak at all.

"Since . . . about . . . four, or five, this morning . . . I think."

Ralph's jaw dropped and he started incredulously.

"Since _four or five this . . . _Mike . . . are you telling me you've been sitting here for _five hours!? _Why in the world would you . . . Mike, _what is going on!?"_

" . . . nothing."

At this, he almost felt a spark of anger igniting deep in his chest, and quickly let go of her shoulder before he gave in to the urge to shake her again. He let out a short growl of frustration and turned his back on her for a few seconds, forcing a long, steady breath in and out and running one hand over his head before looking back at her again.

"Mike . . . " he began, knitting his brow anxiously, " . . . whatever it is, you can _tell me. _I promise I'll understand."

She didn't speak, but her lips parted silently, and the expressionless mask of her face finally began to crack, a sharp, flashing sadness filling her eyes. He pursed his lips, leaned closer to her, and tried again.

"You can tell me anything_, _Mike," he said softly, lowering his voice to just above a whisper and looking her straight in the eye. "_Anything. _Please . . . just let me help you. _Tell me what's wrong." _

Mike said nothing. For what felt like almost a full minute, she just stared at him silently, the pain in her eyes growing brighter and sharper every instant, until finally she looked as if she might burst and overflow with it if she didn't do or say something that very second . . . .

. . . . and that was when Mike suddenly let out the smallest, sharpest, most barely audible gasp of sound he could imagine . . . . threw her arms around his neck . . . .

. . . and kissed him.

Without a single word, Mike lunged at him and kissed him full on the mouth, her lips crashing against his with so much force that he actually stumbled back and had to hold his hands around her waist to keep the two of them from tumbling to the floor. In one instant, blazing color filled his face and his eyes went wide as dinner plates.

Ralph's heart stopped beating. It didn't just skip one beat, or two, or even three . . . it actually stopped pumping altogether for practically a whole ten seconds, and within those ten seconds he was entirely numb from head to toe. Then, when it abruptly started up again - beating so hard and fast to catch up with its normal rhythm that it felt like a fist punching his chest from the inside - the feeling flooded back into his body so rapidly that for one moment it literally paralyzed him.

The first thing that he felt again was heat . . . a radiating, living warmth spreading in pulses from Mike's lips that were pressing relentlessly against his, assaulting him with a nearly indescribable sensation that he had never experienced before in his life . . . and shortly after that, there was the heat from her arms clinging tightly around his neck, her right hand that had found its way to the back of his head, and the gentle weight and warmth of the rest of her body that was leaning completely against his with her feet dangling off the floor. And after the heat, he became aware of the nerves . . . the nerves throughout his entire body that were prickling and dancing like jolts of electricity every time she tilted her head from one side to the other, every time her eyelashes brushed against his skin.

For one long moment . . . _he would never once afterward in his life be absolutely sure just how long_ . . . he stood there, frozen with Mike in his arms, as she kissed him. And then . . . slowly, with his eyelids gradually falling shut and his hands suddenly holding her tighter, Ralph kissed her back.

_The first kiss of his entire life . . . the first kiss of __**their **__life, together._

It took less than two seconds for Ralph to feel positive that he was doing it wrong, but by that time he couldn't have cared less . . . and from what he could gather of Mike's reaction as she moved her hands to grip the sides of his face, she didn't seem to mind too greatly either. And so - for what might have been less than one minute, or, for all he knew, might have been more than five - they stood there together in the middle of the Sugar Rush plug passage, Ralph clumsily fumbling with his hands to try and pull Mike closer into the kiss and she eagerly letting herself be enveloped further and further in his embrace, until finally her head and shoulders and waist were all but entirely hidden inside the clasp of his enormous arms.

And then . . . without any particular prompt from either of them . . . they each drew back at the same time and blinked at each other, both of them slightly out of breath and both of their faces flushed bright pink. For a few seconds, they just stared speechlessly at one another.

At last, overcome with a sudden surge of self-consciousness, Ralph awkwardly lowered Mike back to her feet on the floor, taking several seconds longer to disentangle his hand out of the tangle he'd created in her hair . . . by the time he finally finished, he was almost too embarrassed to look her in the eye, and yet he was too utterly confused and flabbergasted to look anywhere else.

"M . . M . . . M-Mike, I . . . I . . . " he stammered blankly for a moment, his breathing still a bit labored. " . . . I d-don't . . . I don't know what to . . . "

He trailed off briefly, and Mike held his gaze for a second longer, her eyes flashing with a wild, completely unreadable expression . . . and then, without a single word of explanation, she pushed past him and sprinted with all her might straight out of the Sugar Rush entrance and into the overcrowded, almost wholly obstructed main chamber of Game Central Station.

If her kissing him had surprised him, then this new development sent his capacity for shock rocketing up to an entirely new sphere of experience. He was so stunned that by the time he finally managed to snap himself out of it and take off after her, she had already made it halfway across the station.

"Mike! MIKE! _WAIT!" _he bellowed out hoarsely as he ran, making every character in the room sit up sharply and turn to look in his direction.

When Ralph reached the edge of the still mostly-seated crowd, he began tripping and stumbling incessantly over the endless tangle of limbs, inciting a growing murmur of irritation and alarm from those underfoot. People began to angrily get up and move out of his way, but Mike was still yards and yards ahead of him, using her small size and superior nimbleness to thread her way swiftly through the crowd . . . until, suddenly, she bumped into two characters who seized her by the shoulders and arrested her progress, incredulously sputtering her name over and over again and imploring her to calm down and tell them what was going on. Ralph look up, and his jaw dropped in both surprise and relief to see that the two characters were none other than Felix and Calhoun. A few seconds later, he had caught up to the three of them, and the onlookers nearby had risen to their feet and backed away in confusion, forming a small empty circle around the group. Voices all around the station were beginning to chatter.

Mike was thrashing wildly trying to get free, her eyes frantic and her hair falling around her eyes, but she was nearly powerless against Calhoun's trained, iron-like grip. The stunned, worried-looking sergeant gently but authoritatively spun Mike around to face Ralph, holding her arms behind her in an inescapable submission lock. Felix was looking back and forth between the three of them with a flabbergasted stare.

"Ralph . . . Mike . . . what in the _world . . . !?"_

"Let me GO! _Let me GO!" _Mike shouted over and over, struggling futilely in Calhoun's grasp . . . but her hollow, trembling voice was devoid of anger, filled instead with a kind of sorrowful desperation.

Ralph just stood there, staring at her and breathing heavily. If he hadn't been so entirely consumed with confusion, he might have almost felt heartbroken, his hopes and elation plummeting from the dizzying height of the previous moment and dashed to pieces more quickly than they'd been built up.

"Mike, what . . . what . . . ?" he tried vainly to form the words, but they wouldn't come . . . finally, he just held his hands out to her in helpless bewilderment.

"LET ME _GO!" _she screamed, louder than before, never lifting her eyes to meet Ralph's gaze.

"Whoa! _Whoa! _Just hold your wild horses for a minute, kiddo!" Calhoun snapped gruffly, giving Mike a firm but careful shake. "_One _of you had better start explaining what's going on here!"

"ALLOW _ME," _a sharp, booming voice suddenly sounded somewhere close behind them.

In spite of everything that was happening, Ralph paused for a moment with a sudden jolt of recollection . . . _he __**knew **__that voice . . . he was positive he did . . . but where, where had he heard it before . . . ?_

Every eye in the station turned to look in the direction the voice had come from . . . from the central information kiosk, sitting in the center of the enormous room just a few yards behind Calhoun's back . . . and a collective gasp sounded from the crowd. All at once, no one was sitting down anymore . . . every person in the room was instantly on their feet and staring in baffled silence at the group of figures who had suddenly appeared beside the central kiosk.

There, standing wearily on two feet with the aid of a security-level surge protector on either side of her . . . with her microphone, turned on and gripped fiercely in one hand . . . was the SP program coordinator.

Ralph's mouth hung open in silent disbelief.

For half a minute, a stunned silence permeated the room. Characters hurried out of the way as the program coordinator, limping along with both arms draped over the shoulders of the two SPs, and followed closely by what appeared to be the entirety of the surge protection staff, moved quietly across the floor until the entire procession was standing directly in front of Ralph, Calhoun, Felix and Mike, staring them down with expressions of such bitter animosity that they sent an alarming chill down Ralph's spine. Mike had stopped thrashing and gone completely silent.

The first one to find his voice was Felix.

"But . . . b-but . . . M-Madam Program Coordinator!" he blurted out in shock, quickly removing his hat. "We all thought that you were . . . you w-were . . . "

"DEAD?" the short, dark-haired blue woman shot back angrily, and as she did a shudder of static coursed through her programming. Another small, startled gasp sounded from the surrounding crowd. "Deleted? _Destroyed? _Well . . . you were half right. I nearly _was _destroyed . . . and do you all want to know WHY?"

The room stood deathly silent . . . and with a furious, wild-eyed glare, the head SP shot out one arm in an accusing point, rippled with another surge of static, and snarled in a savage voice that echoed off the walls of the station,

"Because of _HER!"_

Ralph turned around to follow the line of her arm with his eyes . . . and stopped cold.

She was pointing straight at Michelangela.

The station immediately broke into a murmur of confused talking, and Calhoun instantly let go of Mike's arms. She, Felix, and Ralph exchanged startled, incredulous glances . . . then each turned and started talking fervently to the SP at the same time.

"You're . . . you're wrong! There has to be some mistake . . . "

"She's never hurt anyone in her life, she's only been plugged in since - "

" - _got_ to be an explanation for - "

"SILENCE!" the program coordinator shrieked, and cranked the volume up on her microphone so that a debilitating screech of static sounded over the PA system, making everyone in the room shudder and bare their teeth.

"_That _woman . . . " the SP went on, breaking away from her supporting subordinates and limping dangerously toward Mike, her blue eyes seething with rage. " . . . that . . . _character . . . _is responsible for every disaster that has befallen this arcade in the past week. She is the one who infected and crippled the security staff . . . _she _is the one who _destroyed_ the firewall system and nearly _OBLITERATED _my programming out of existence, so that I have only _this day, this very hour, _regained consciousness . . . _she _is the reason that this 'code disruption' has spread to each and every one of your games, and _SHE _is the reason that this _entire arcade _now teeters on the brink of total annihilation! Heed what I say, everyone, and listen to me now when I tell you that I _know, _and have seen with my _own eyes, _that THIS WOMAN _IS THE __**VIRUS**__!"_

There was one still, harrowing second of total silence following the program coordinator's speech . . . and then, like a tsunami of sound and terror rising up from calm waters, the room exploded into a thunderous rage of shouting voices and shaking fists, and all at once the crowd began to press in on Ralph and the others from all sides. The SPs dutifully took the tasers from their belts and began moving towards Mike in trained formation, the program coordinator simultaneously shouting for the crowd to keep back and for the security staff to attack and apprehend.

Ralph's wide, frantic eyes darted from the approaching squadron of blue officers back to Mike and the Fix-Its, who were standing behind him and looking around at the threatening mob with three entirely different expressions . . . Felix, who looked somehow both terrified and indignant on Mike's behalf, and had already pulled his hammer defensively out of his belt . . . Calhoun, who was glaring and baring her teeth furiously at the characters pressing in around them, moving to stand protectively in front of Mike and looking as if she were ready to grab the first person who dared try to attack and rip their arm clean from its socket . . . and Mike . . . who was standing perfectly still, perfectly silent, and staring at Ralph with a look in her eyes that he couldn't have put a name to if he had all the time in the world to think about it.

The roar of the crowd grew angrier and more violent, the team of armed SPs advanced another yard . . . . and all at once, Ralph snapped.

"Don't . . . you . . . _TOUCH HER!"_

The sheer volume and ferocity of his scream silenced the nearby onlookers and froze the surge protectors in their tracks for only a split-second . . . but that was all the time he needed to charge forward, rear back with one balled up fist, and deliver a wrecking-ball pendulum swing with his arm that knocked over more than a half-dozen surge protectors like they were a stack of nine-pins.

The room erupted into pandemonium . . . the nearest characters lunged forward and tried to arrest Mike themselves, and Calhoun delivered her first jaw-cracking punch with a furious battle cry . . . half of the surge protectors rallied and brandished their weapons at Ralph, and the other half shrank back fearfully . . . the program coordinator was barking shrill orders through the microphone, people were pressing in from all sides in an increasingly violent throng . . . snarling ferociously, Ralph raised both fists in the air and prepared to strike again, and again, and again, as many times as it would take to keep them from reaching her . . . when suddenly . . . .

_TTTHHHHHWACK!_

Rising up for one fleeting second above the roaring din of the mob and the fighting, Ralph heard something - a familiar, shooting, whistling sound that he couldn't quite put his finger on - and then, the next instant there was a blinding, searing stripe of pain slashing across his shoulders from behind and staggering him down to one knee . . . and after that, a voice, high and hoarse and weak, struggling to cry out over the deafening sounds of the crowd.

"STOP IT!"

Ralph froze, his eyes widening down at the floor as he braced himself with his hands and the hot pain across his back simmered to a dull, aching throb . . . because he knew the voice immediately, and the instant he heard the voice, he realized what it was that had hit him.

"I SAID _STOP! STOP IT, AND I'LL LET YOU TAKE ME!"_

At these words, the roar of the crowd and the surge protectors gradually softened, bit by bit, until at last everything was silent again, every eye in the room trained disbelievingly on the owner of the shrill, tired voice. Ralph slowly stood up and turned around - not wanting to believe it, but already knowing that it was true.

Mike stood alone in the middle of the open circle, her eyes flashing fiercely and her chest heaving. She had broken away from Felix and Calhoun, who now stood frozen in shock and staring at her along with the others . . . in one hand, she gripped her Battle-Strokes brush, and the trailing splatter of red paint on the floor near his feet confirmed resolutely what Ralph already knew . . . that she was the one who had hit him.

For a few long, horrible seconds, everyone . . . including Ralph . . . simply gaped at her, until finally, the head SP found her voice and came hobbling warily forward.

"What did you say?" she demanded in a slow, dark mutter.

Mike swallowed, and Ralph saw that her glaring eyes had begun to shine.

"I said . . . I'll let you take me."

A fire blazed up instantly in Ralph's chest and he made a desperate, furious lunge toward her, holding out his arms as if wanting to catch her up trap her inside of them.

"Michelangela, _NO! _You _can't, _I won't _let you - !"_

_TTTHHWACK!_

Before he could reach her, she turned to look at him with a mixture of anger and misery flashing in her eyes, and with another violent swing of the brush she sent a cracking whip of vermilion paint shooting out and striking him square across the chest. Ralph reeled back as the wind was knocked clean out of him, flashes of black swimming in his vision as he gasped raggedly and fell back down to his hands and knees.

The pain from the brushstroke was almost crippling . . . but it was nothing compared to the pain that had begun welling up in his heart.

_"Mike . . . " _he wheezed softly, his eyes narrowing blearily up at her in confusion and a gradually dawning horror of realization; "_Mike . . . why . . . why are you . . . ?"_

"M-Michelangela . . . you . . . you can't just - " Felix's voice, hollow and disbelieving, sounded from the edge of the circle, but Mike cut him off before he could finish.

"IT'S TRUE," she declared loudly, emotionlessly, so that everyone around them could hear. ". . . it's . . . it's true. All of it. I . . . . I am the virus."

Mike looked up at the head SP, slowly tucked the brush back inside her smock, and held her hands out passively in front of her.

"Take me wherever you want," she said quietly. "Just don't . . . don't hurt anyone else here."

The program coordinator narrowed her brow flatly in a combination of acquiescence and disgust . . . then raised one hand and snapped her fingers so sharply that the sound echoed in the vast room. Six surge protectors immediately rushed forward and surrounded Mike.

"NO! _NO!" _Ralph screamed hoarsely, staggering wildly to his feet . . . but between the heads of the surge protectors, Mike turned and shot him a cold, staring look so hard and forbidding that it stopped him in his tracks, shattering whatever final piece of his heart had still remained unshattered. As the SPs cuffed her hands behind her, she held Ralph's gaze and slowly shook her head back and forth, her eyes boring into his without the smallest trace of warmth or even remorse.

When she spoke, the words fell faintly on his ears, as if muttered from somewhere far away . . . and everything inside of him finally went numb.

"Go home, Ralph. Go home . . . and don't ever try to come near me again."

The electric handcuffs _clinked _shut around her wrists . . . the rest of the surge protectors, encircling her on all sides and moving together in rigid formation, marched her in grim silence across the station and up to the Masterwork gate, the crowd of characters parting like the Red Sea out of their path. Now that the arrest had been accomplished, no one seemed to want to come within ten feet of Mike. The program coordinator, helped along by two other officers once more, followed the procession until they had reached Michelangela's gate, then turned around and addressed the room through her microphone one final time.

"Your attention . . . please. The virus . . . has been apprehended. As of this moment, and until further notice, the game console Masterwork is officially in a state of permanent and total _quarantine. _There is to be absolutely _no _traffic in or out of the game, and it . . . as well as its _inhabitants . . . _are to be considered extremely dangerous and _highly __contagious. _Now that we have isolated the source of the virus, we can begin implementing measures to see to its eradication from the arcade. Please return to your games and await further instruction."

With that, the program coordinator and her assistants vanished into the floor, and the remaining surge protectors arranged themselves in an armed barricade around the entrance to Masterwork.

Michelangela . . . with her hands still bound behind her . . . was escorted through the gate and down the hall toward the anteroom.

She disappeared without looking back.

For several minutes, a dead, horrible silence pervaded Game Central Station.

Then, as the crowd gradually began to mutter quietly amongst themselves and disperse in all directions toward their respective game gates . . . Ralph, his eyes never once moving from the place where Mike had been . . . slowly sank down to his knees on the station floor.

Their faces pale and speechless, Felix and Calhoun seemed to break out of a mutual stunned trance and hurry toward him, looking first at him and then each other, then back at him, with their mouths hovering open and unspoken words struggling to escape from their throats . . . but in the end, it was painfully clear that neither of them had any idea what to say. In fact . . . there really wasn't anything _to _say.

And so, for a long, silent moment, the three of them just stood there side by side, the Fix-Its staring down at their feet and he staring forward at the now locked and guarded Masterwork gate . . . until finally, his shoulders slumped and his head fell, and with a shuddering breath . . . Ralph buried his face in his hands.


	39. Chapter 38: Don't Close Your Eyes

**A/N: **I must regretfully inform you, dear readers, that the next update after this one probably isn't going to come for about another two weeks, as I'm heading off on a cross-country road trip with the fiancee and his family. I swear, I'm not being this evil on purpose . . . thank you all for your patience in dealing with my relentless cliff-hangers!

**Disclaimer; **I own none of the copyrighted concepts or characters mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 38: Don't Close Your Eyes_

"Alright, alRIGHT . . . would everybody please just keep their pixels on? I told you, the virus is _gone . . . _I'm not glitching, the castle _staff's _not glitching . . . everything is going to be _fine!"_

Vanellope narrowed her eyes and raised her voice to a firm, insistent volume to make herself heard over the panicked muttering of the other Sugar Rush avatars, who were all assembled in front of her in an anxious huddle in the middle of the throne room . . . but try as she might, her words did nothing to assuage them.

"But it's not just _us_ . . . the whole arcade is shut down!" Rancis cried out worriedly, followed by a ripple of murmuring agreement from the others. "That's means the virus is still out there somewhere, doesn't it?"

"Yeah . . . what's going to stop it from just infecting our game _again?"_ demanded Taffyta.

"I don't _wanna _start malfunctioning!" Crumbelina wailed, and immediately the chorus of frightened arguments started up again. Minty Zaki, Sticky Wipplesnit, and Torvald Batterbutter simultaneously burst into tears.

Vanellope heaved an exasperated sigh and smacked her palm to her forehead, dragging it slowly down her face and grumbling to herself for a moment before looking up again with a sharp, authoritative glare. She took a deep breath, then hollered at the top of her lungs,

"I _said . . . KNOCK IT OFF!" _

Her voice echoed once off the sugar-crusted walls of the throne room, and all of the racers immediately fell silent and looked up at her with fourteen pairs of wide, pleading eyes.

"What are you guys, a bunch of _jelly pops? _If you'll quit your crying for two seconds and let me _talk_, I'll tell you_ exactly _what we're gonna do!"

Some of the racers let out a few more apprehensive whimpers, but they all nodded obediently and said nothing else. Gloyd sniffled loudly and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Vanellope pursed her lips and folded her arms.

"There . . . that's _better. _Okay, marshmallow-brains, now listen up . . . _first - "_

BOOOOM!

Vanellope stopped in mid-sentence and jerked her head up, blinking in shock at the huge double doors on the far end of the room which had abruptly burst open with a resonating bang that instantly stirred the other Sugar Rush racers back into an anxious frenzy, yelping and darting their heads around. Ignoring their cries of alarm, Vanellope quickly pushed past them and ran up to meet the two familiar figures who had just come zooming through the front entrance on an equally familiar hoverboard, and were now floating to a stop in the middle of the room.

"Fix-Its!?" Vanellope blurted out, watching confusedly as Felix jumped down from the cruiser and hopped over to meet her while Calhoun hovered a few feet off the floor and kept the jets running. "But . . .what are youdoing _here? _I thought Ralph said you guys were both - "

"I'm sorry, Vanellope, but there's no time," Felix interrupted her shortly, taking her hand and tugging her toward the hoverboard. "We'll explain everything on the way, but you've got to come with us right now!"

Felix was speaking in the calm, even, yet detectably urgent tone of voice that he only used in particularly dire situations, and Vanellope's puzzled stare was replaced with a growing look of dread as she immediately realized that something was seriously wrong.

"What is it? What's going on?" she demanded worriedly, jumping up onto the cruiser with Felix and bracing herself on Calhoun's leg as she promptly jammed her heel down on the accelerator and took off again, rocketing out the front doors and picking up speed and altitude as they jetted over the royal highway.

"It's Ralph . . . and Michelangela," Felix answered gravely, holding his cap on with one hand and squinting in the wind. "We've . . . well . . . we've got a _problem_, Vanellope."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Scarcely a few minutes later, they were rapidly descending toward the narrow, cocoa-dirt road that wound up in a steep spiral around Diet Cola Mountain. Calhoun, who had remained silent and grim-faced throughout the flight, eased her foot off of the accelerator and lowered the cruiser down onto the steeply angled road as gently as possible, just as her husband was concluding his brief synopsis of the events they witnessed in the station not twenty minutes before.

" . . . and then, finally, he just got up and _left_. He was so distraught, he wouldn't say a word to either us . . . so of course, we followed him, and when he headed _here_, we thought for sure he was coming to see you . . . but then, he went straight up to the mountain and just sat there, and still refused to say anything. We were hoping, that . . . maybe . . . if _you _tried talking to him, Vanellope . . . "

Felix trailed off thoughtfully and stepped down onto the road . . . but for another moment after the jets went silent, Vanellope remained rooted in place on the cruiser with both arms wrapped around Calhoun's leg, her hair mussed from the wind and her eyes narrowed unseeingly off into space.

"It _can't_ . . . no, it . . . it _can't _be," the little girl muttered, shaking her head slowly in disbelief. "Mike wouldn't . . . she just wouldn't dothat, even if she _did _have the virus . . . there has to be some kind of mistake . . . "

Felix lowered his gaze solemnly to his feet. "I hope you're right, Vanellope, but . . . mistake or no mistake, it _did _happen. We saw it with our own eyes."

Vanellope knit her brow in an anxious, sympathetic furrow and - perhaps unconsciously - tightened her hold around Calhoun's leg.

"Poor _Ralphie," _she murmured softly under her breath.

Refusing to let her hard expression betray any sign of the similar remorse she was feeling on their heartbroken friend's behalf, Calhoun drew a slow, steadying breath through her nostrils, then let it out again, bending over and gently extricating Vanellope from around her leg and helping her down to the ground. She compacted the cruiser and swung it gruffly over her shoulder, motioning with one hand toward the others as she set off up the mountainside.

"Come on, you two," she muttered, and they obediently followed after her.

Less than a minute later, the three of them rounded the last curve in the winding road and reached the summit of the narrow, bottle-shaped mountain. They spotted Ralph immediately. He was still sitting exactly where they had left him, hunched over on a small cola-rock with his head hanging low and his elbows resting on his knees. His back was turned to them, and as they approached him gingerly from behind, he gave no sign that he either heard them or detected their presence in any way.

Vanellope shot an uneasy glance back at Calhoun and Felix, the latter urging her forward with a few gentle hand motions. The little girl hooked one corner of her mouth in a dubious frown, but crept forward the few remaining feet and moved to stand in front of the silent wrecker, looking up into his face with a compassionate, but worried gleam in her eyes.

"Ralph?" she squeaked softly, reaching up to touch his limp hand with hers. "Hey, big guy . . . are . . . are you okay?"

She was trying to sound light-hearted, but the underlying concern in her voice was too heavy to conceal. A few seconds passed, and Ralph said nothing. Vanellope shot them another anxious look, then tried again.

"Ralph, it's . . . it's not really that bad. I'm sure this is all some big misunderstanding. Everything's gonna be okay, you'll see . . . w-we'll figure something out. We'll talk to the surge protectors and explain everything . . . and if they won't listen, then . . . then we'll just bust into Masterwork ourselves!"

There was another short silence. Vanellope's brow furrowed tighter as she stared hopefully, pleadingly up at him . . . and then, abruptly, he lifted his gaze to meet hers, and her eyes widened. From where Calhoun and her husband stood, Ralph's face was hidden from them . . . but from the change in Vanellope's countenance when he finally looked back at her, it was obvious that nothing she'd said - indeed, nothing she _could _have said - had helped to comfort him the slightest bit.

Ralph still said nothing in reply . . . instead, he simply lifted one hand and put it around Vanellope's shoulders, then leaned further down and calmly, silently drew her close to him, touching his forehead against hers. Vanellope's eyes grew sadder and more desperate as she watched him, but she compliantly wrapped her arms around his leg and let her head rest on his knee as he held her. For one tense moment, they stayed there together . . . then, just as calmly and quietly, Ralph lifted his head again and let her go, staring listlessly off into the distance just as he had been before.

Nearly on the verge of frustrated tears, Vanellope turned back to the Fix-Its and gave them a pleading, helpless look . . . and it was at that instant, as she stood there looking into Vanellope's wide, desperate eyes, Calhoun discovered - quite suddenly - that she had had enough.

A low growl began working its way up from the back of her throat, and Calhoun grit her teeth and suppressed it as she abruptly shrugged the cruiser off of her shoulder and half-handed, half-threw it at Felix, who caught it against his chest with a startled _oof._

"Honey . . . take Vanellope and wait for us down the road," she uttered darkly, her jaw clenched and her eyes narrowed at Ralph's slumping back.

"What? Why?" Felix blinked in surprise, then lowered his tone and his brow suspiciously at her. _"Tamora . . . _why? What are you going to _do?"_

Calhoun tightened her hands into fists, and the mesh and leather of her gloves gave a menacing _creak._

"I'm going to _encourage him."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Somewhere close behind him, Ralph's deadened ears vaguely picked up whispers of talk between Calhoun and Felix, and the next moment Vanellope had slipped quietly away from him. There was a soft patter of small feet retreating down the road and fading into silence around the bend . . . and then, the slow, heavy, deliberate footfalls of combat boots strolling up beside him.

Too numb and hollow to pay any real attention to anything around him at the moment, Ralph dully glanced up once from the corner of his eyes and saw that Felix and Vanellope had disappeared, and that Calhoun was now standing next to him with her arms folded, rocking on her toes and looking out over the vast Sugar Rush landscape with a casual expression. Ralph blinked at her emptily, then turned back again to stare out at nothing.

_And that was exactly what he felt . . . . nothing._

_Nothing._

Nothing, that was . . . until the next moment, when Calhoun - without a single hint of warning - turned on her heel, reared back one powerful, armored fist, and abruptly punched him in the jaw with enough force to shatter glass.

_THWOCK!_

"OO_OOWCH!" _Ralph roared out before he could stop himself, nearly falling sideways off of the rock as stars swam briefly in front of his eyes. As soon as he regained his balance, he jerked his head toward Calhoun, holding his throbbing jaw with one hand and squinting at her incredulously.

"W-what the . . . what was THAT FOR!?" he demanded, half-heartedly trying to raise his voice to indignance, but still too dead inside to come off sounding anything more than confused.

Calhoun, her eyelids lowered and her brows raised calmly, straightened up and placed her hands on her hips.

"That was to get your attention," she answered plainly. ". . . and _this _is to _keep it_."

_SWACK!_

_"OW!"_

Ralph's head snapped sharply to one side as Calhoun unapologetically back-handed him across the face, and before he could open his mouth to speak again she had seized him by the neck of his shirt and wrenched him forward on the rock so that their eyes were level and their faces inches apart.

"I have one question for you, Wreck-It," she growled fiercely, holding his baffled stare without flinching. _"What the bits are you __**doing**__ here?"_

Ralph blinked, his brow furrowing in confusion. His brain and his heart were now struggling to push through two different barriers at two different speeds, and for a moment he was utterly lost in the disconnect between the two.

"What am I . . . _what?"_

Calhoun gave him a violent shake and pointed with her free arm in the direction of the far-off entrance to Sugar Rush at the top of the Rainbow Bridge, sitting quietly in the distance.

"What do you think you're doing sitting _here, _while the girl you _claim _to have feelings for is in trouble _out there?"_

The mere mention of Mike sent a bolt of almost unbearable misery piercing through the shell of protective numbness that had formed itself around Ralph's heart, and all at once he was finding it hard to keep breathing.

_Her lips against his, her hands around his neck, her eyelashes tickling like fly-wings on his skin . . . his first kiss, __**their **__first kiss . . . so sudden that it was almost frightening, and yet unbearably wonderful at the same time . . . ._

_. . . and then__. . . in one moment, like a roof caving in, all of it crashing down around him . . . ._

_"Go home, Ralph. Go home . . . and don't every try to come near me again."_

_The paint splatters on his chest and back were gone, as well as the stinging welts swelling hotly where they had struck - both removed by Felix's hammer shortly after the incident - but they had been replaced ten times over by an entirely different kind of agony. It was a hurt that Ralph had never experienced before, a pain that he didn't know what to do with . . . a pain deep, deep inside, so deep that it almost seemed to have become a physical part of him . . . a permanent, crippling heartbreak that he would never again be without._

Ralph looked into Calhoun's unyielding, demanding stare with his mouth hovering open, his mind searching desperately for a way to try and explain the pain to her in a way that anyone could possibly understand . . . . but seconds ticked by, and no words would come. Finally, he just breathed out a long exhale and slumped back silently in defeat.

Calhoun snorted in disgust and gave him a final shove, letting go of his shirt and clenching her fists at her sides.

"You know something, Wreck-It? You're pa_thetic."_

In his state, the insult was more bemusing to him than it was hurtful, and Ralph just looked up at her with a questioning glance.

"That's right . . . _pathetic,_" she repeated. "Felix is too sweet to admit it, and the pipsqueak is probably too young to understand, so I guess _I'm_ the one who has to come out and say it. For all your blushing and babbling, all your big talk about _yings _and _special somebodys?_ . . . you must not have ever _really _cared about Michelangela at all."

Like the blow from a pickaxe cracking a layer of ice, her last accusation finally penetrated through the barrier of hurt surrounding his heart and struck home.

Ralph froze. His eyes went wide for a moment . . . then narrowed into a seething, incredulous glare as he slowly stood up and rose to his full height in front of Calhoun. She held his gaze and didn't back down a fraction of an inch.

Somewhere inside the consuming pit of heartbreak, he felt a spark . . . a spark of old, familiar heat warming through the cold and the numbness and almost helping him forget, if only for an instant, Mike's horrible last words to him.

"_What did you say?" _

"You heard me!" Calhoun shot back fearlessly, tilting her head back to stare him straight in the eye. "When it comes right down to it, I guess Mike doesn't really matter that much to you . . . does she?"

For a few seconds, Ralph just stood there and bristled in disbelief. If he hadn't managed to find his voice again when he did, he might have actually given in to the urge to repay Calhoun's punch with one of his own.

"Don't . . . you . . . _dare . . . _don't you_ DARE_ TELL ME I DON'T CARE ABOUT HER!" he shouted savagely at the top of his voice. "You have _no_ _idea _what she means to me!"

"Oh, yeah? Then explain to me why the minute things went wrong, you hauled your carcass straight to this mountain-top to _pout, _instead of trying to figure out a way to _help her!"_

"YOU WERE _THERE!" _Ralph bellowed. "You _saw_ what happened!I _tried_ to stop them from arresting her, and then she . . . she . . . " he trailed off, the words choking in his throat for a moment. " . . . she just . . . _gave up! _She . . . she never wants to _see me again . . . _she said so herself!"

Evidently unmoved by the emotion thickening his voice, Calhoun just stood there and narrowed her eyes at him.

"Funny . . . those aren't the words _I _remember her using," she replied shortly.

Ralph groaned miserably and tossed his hands in the air, dropping back down onto the rock.

"What _difference _does it make!? There's nothing I can do! It's _over!"_

"WRONG AGAIN, Wreck-It. This is _not _over."

He blinked up at her in disbelief. _"What?"_

"This isn't over until you've gotten up off that sorry butt of yoursand done everything you _possibly can_ to set things right!"

"Calhoun, you _HEARD _what she said! Mike doesn't even _want _me to - "

"Ralph . . . did it ever occur to you that _maybe _the reason Mike said those things is because she cares just as much about _you _as you do about _her?"_

Ralph opened his mouth angrily to reply . . . then stopped, the words dying on his tongue before he could sputter them out and his expression abruptly softening. Calhoun ranted on, ignoring the gradual look of astonishment stealing over his face as he listened.

"Don't you _get it, _you gargantuan _clod!? _Mike turned herself in because she knew that if she hadn't, you would have kept fighting for her until they had no choice but to put _you_ down, too!She didn't do it to hurtyou, she did it to try and _save you . . . _and if _anything _that you ever felt for her was real, then you wouldn't stop until you'd done the same for her!"

For a split-second after she stopped shouting, Calhoun's words seem to echo in his ears like a clamor of harsh, meaningless noises . . . but then, as he stared speechlessly into her fierce, piercing eyes and saw the unmistakable glimmer of warmth and empathy hidden behind them . . . all at once, the truth of what she was saying came flooding in and hit him like a slap in the face.

_"Take me wherever you want. Just don't . . . don't hurt anyone else here."_

_"Go home, Ralph. Go home . . . "_

" . . . and . . . don't ever try to come near me . . . again," Ralph slowly finished the memory to himself in a breathless whisper, the words suddenly taking on an entirely different meaning than they had when he'd first heard her say them.

_Of course . . . it was so clear to him, now . . . how had he not seen it before? _

_The hurt . . . the hurt had been so strong and so sudden, it had blinded him to what was really happening . . . what she was really __**doing **__. . . ._

_Mike . . . ._

"So," Calhoun muttered suddenly, her now stern and quieted voice cutting through his inner revelation and drawing him back to the present. "What's it gonna be, junk-pile? Are you going to keep sitting here feeling sorry for yourself . . . or are you going to get up and _do something _about it?"

He hesitated for another moment, his heart still reeling to catch up with his brain . . . then, with a steeled glint flashing in his eyes and banishing the last remaining traces of defeat and hopelessness, Ralph solemnly rose to his feet.

"If we're going to get past those guards outside Masterwork . . . we're gonna need a distraction," he answered thoughtfully.

A broad smile spread across Calhoun's face, and she lowered her brow slyly as she gave him a stiff, affectionate nudge on the arm.

"That much, I think I can help you with. Now come on, Romeo . . . let's get this rescue train a 'rollin."

She nodded, then turned and began marching resolutely down the mountain, motioning for him to follow.

"Hey . . . Calhoun?"

She paused, looking back at him over her shoulder . . . and in spite of the sight warmth creeping us his neck, Ralph hooked one corner of his mouth at her in a sheepish, grateful smile.

" . . . _thanks."_

She smiled knowingly back at him, nodded once more, and the two of them set off together down the winding road. Ralph shook his head absently and stared down at the ground as they walked, marveling at how foolishly he'd allowed his feelings to make him behave.

"Really, Calhoun . . . thank you. I . . . _needed that,"_ he muttered presently, watching their mismatched strides kick up joint clouds of cola-dust. "After what happened in the station, I guess I just sort of . . . shut down. I don't know _why_ I came all the way up here."

" . . . I think I might," she murmured quietly in reply. Ralph glanced up at her curiously, and she tilted her head forward so that her eyes were hidden behind her bangs. "This is the place where you learned how to sacrifice everything for someone you love. You've had that lesson in you ever since, but . . . after all this time . . . maybe you just needed a little reminder."

Ralph's heart gave a slight palpitation of surprise at Calhoun's use of the _L_-word, as well as the drastically uncharacteristic softness and understanding of her tone. It caught him so off guard, in fact, that before he even realized what he was doing, he heard himself blurting out the sudden fear that had moved in to take the place of his debilitating heartbreak, confiding in his protagonist's wife in a way he'd never before felt able to in all the time that he'd known her.

"Calhoun . . . what happens if I _can't_ set things right? What if Mike, and I . . . what if . . . what if I can't ever _be with her _again?"

Calhoun stopped walking. They had come to the bend in the road where Felix and Vanellope were waiting for them, but she stopped just short of their line of vision, looking up at Ralph with an iron-hard gleam in her eyes . . . and when she answered him, she spoke softly enough so that only he could hear.

"Then the important thing is that you still _tried._ When you love someone, Ralph . . . it isn't about what they can do for you. It's about what you can do for _them."_

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Less than fifteen minutes later, as Calhoun was stealthily craning her neck a scant fraction of an inch around the corner of the Sugar Rush game gate to peer in the direction of the Masterwork entrance - which, as she indicated to Ralph and the others with her free hand, was being guarded by no less than _six_ surge protectors - she lifted her pocket communicator to her mouth, depressed the button, and calmly whispered into it.

"Kohut . . . this is the Sergeant, calling in from Game Central Station. Repeat, this is the _Sergeant, _over. Do you copy, Kohut? Over."

There was a crackle of static, and then a deep voice responding from the other end of the transmission, the words too faint and fuzzy for anyone but Calhoun to make out. As the two of them continued to exchange brief messages that were mostly coded in soldier-speak, Ralph, Vanellope and Felix each struggled to creep close enough to the edge of the gate to be able to catch a glimpse of their target without being seen themselves.

"Somebody please explain to me again how this isn't an _incredibly_ stupid idea," Vanellope muttered under her breath.

"It _is _a stupid idea," Ralph answered flatly, grabbing her by the hood and pulling her a few inches further back into the Sugar Rush entrance. " . . . but it's also the only one we've got. Nobody said _you _had to come along, kid . . . in fact, I still say you _shouldn't. _You just got over a nasty code malfunction . . . you should be staying put in Sugar Rush, where you're _safe."_

Vanellope shot him a disgusted look and visibly had to restrain herself from blowing a loud, defiant raspberry.

"Yeah, right . . . and leave _you _three chuckleheads in charge of our only plan for rescuing Mike? I might as well just pull the plug on Masterwork my_self _and save you the trouble!"

"Would you two _please _keep it down!?" Felix hissed sharply, just as his wife was finishing her cryptic transmission.

"Roger that, Kohut. You just get the team assembled and out here as quick as you can . . . we'll wait for your signal. _Sergeant out_."

Calhoun slipped the communicator back into its slot on her belt, then turned to address them with a stern, no-nonsense look in her eyes.

"Okay, kids . . . here's how this is gonna go down," she whispered gruffly, sliding her cruiser off of her shoulder and crouching down to unfold it as silently as possible. The others reflexively crouched down with her, so that the four of them were squatting together in a low huddle in the middle of the plug passage. "There are six armed surge protectors guarding the Masterwork gate. We could probably take them in a fight easily enough, but we don't know how far they have permission to go in order to protect Mike's gate. They might even have orders to detonate it if security is compromised . . . and even if we _could _force our way past them without that happening, they would still just send in reinforcements as soon as we were in the game, and we'd end up trapped in Masterwork along with Mike. Our only chance is to sneak in without the SPs noticing us."

"Yyyyeah . . . and, uh . . . _how _are we going to do that, exactly?" muttered Vanellope.

Calhoun shot her a devious half grin and tapped the walkie-talkie on her belt.

"With some good old fashioned _misdirection_. In five minutes, Kohut and his squad are going to run an interference play for us, and while they've got the surge protectors distracted, we're going to make a break for the gate."

Felix, Ralph, and Vanellope exchanged anxious, skeptical glances.

"But Tammy, sweetheart . . . " Felix whispered thoughtfully, " . . . even _with _a distraction, how are we going to run all the way across the station and through the gate without being spotted?I mean, _maybe, _if it was only the two of us, or even _three_ of us, we would have a chance, but . . . let's face it . . . they're going to see and hear _Ralph_ coming a mile away . . . no offense, brother."

"None taken," Ralph mumbled truthfully under his breath. He had been thinking the same thing.

_"Ah,"_ Calhoun raised one finger and looked at them sneakily as she finished opening up the hoverboard. "This would be true, Felix . . . _if, _we were going to try making it on _foot."_

She straightened up and smiled, just as the hoverboard's silent air-jets propelled it gently a few inches off the floor. Ralph and Felix looked blankly at each other, then back at Calhoun.

" . . . I think I agree with Vanellope," Felix winced. "This does _not _seem like a good idea, Tammy."

"That's the understatement of the day!" Vanellope hissed incredulously. "You really expect _all four of us _to fit on that thing and _still _make it past the SPs without being noticed? We're gonna look like a giant orange _blimp _floating through the station! . . . no offense, Ralph."

_"None taken."_

"Look, guys . . . I know it seems risky, but _trust me . . ._ this is the fastest, and _quietest _way for all of us to get through," Calhoun reasoned firmly. "Kohut and my men will take care of the SPs . . . all you threehave to worry about is just _staying on the board."_

Ralph looked down at the silently hovering cruiser and frowned dubiously. In the tension of the moment, the surface of the hoverboard seemed even smaller and narrower than he ever remembered it being in the past . . . but the inescapable truth of the matter was that Calhoun was right. It was, unfortunately, the best chance they had.

Heaving a small sigh of resignation, Ralph ran one hand down his face and lumbered to his feet, followed uneasily by Vanellope and Felix.

"I sure hope you know what you're doing, Space Cadet," he muttered, shaking his head wearily at Calhoun.

She grinned silently in reply.

Scarcely a few minutes later, however, as he was struggling to position himself steadily on the vehicle, Ralph was already seriously reconsidering aborting the stealth plan in favor of taking their chances in an all-out dogfight with the surge protectors. He shifted the center of his weight for the tenth time in twice as many seconds and grimaced apprehensively down at his feet, which had far too little wiggle-room for comfort on the platform of the cruiser. The worst of it was that he couldn't even hold out his hands to balance himself . . . because of the severely diminished standing room on the board, there was no other option but for him to cradle Felix in the crook of one arm and Vanellope in the other, holding them awkwardly far back on either side of his body so that Calhoun could still have even an iota of space in which to function. In order to operate the controls with her heel, however, she still had to stand so close in front of him that her back was pressing into his stomach . . . with the added weight and bulk of three extra passengers - and one of them _Ralph_-sized - it would be a miracle if she could retain even half of the craft's normal maneuverability.

Once the four of them were all securely - or at least, as securely as they were _going _to be - in place, Calhoun gently eased down on the accelerator and lifted the cruiser several feet into the air. Ralph couldn't help but notice, with another pained glance downward, that the engines seemed to be struggling.

"This is it," Vanellope murmured disdainfully, shaking her head and covering her eyes with her hand. "This is how we're all going to _die."_

_"Shut it!" _Calhoun whispered suddenly, holding up her fist and making them all go rigidly alert. "There's the signal!"

Holding his breath, Ralph peered over Calhoun's head toward the Hero's Duty game gate, which was visible across the station from where they were hovering secretly within the Sugar Rush arch. There, he saw that Kohut and a contingent of five other soldiers had appeared from within the game, creeping down the plug passage together in formation and making impressively little noise for a squad of heavily armored muscle-men. Kohut caught Calhoun's gaze, and they exchanged a quick series of hand motions across the empty station. When they finished, Calhoun resettled herself on the cruiser and hunched her shoulders around her ears, her entire body taught and ready to spring at a moment's notice.

"Alright, kids . . . " she whispered. " . . . we only get one shot at this, so let's make it count. Here we go . . . three . . . _two . . . __**one**__!"_

She pointed two fingers in the direction of Masterwork . . . Kohut nodded, raised one hand to the men behind him . . . and then, with a chorus of battle cries that exploded the tranquil silence of the station so suddenly it nearly made Ralph topple off the hoverboard in alarm, the soldiers charged. Instead of moving as a cohesive unit of attack toward Masterwork, however, they burst out of their gate and began running frantically in every direction around the transit area like a flock of beheaded chickens, some hollering nonsensical gibberish at the top of their voices and others firing their weapons wildly into the air.

Ralph unconsciously held Vanellope and Felix tighter in his arms, the three of them staring open-mouthed at the scene of pure chaos unfolding in front of them. Before any of them had time to say anything, however, they heard a collection of startled voices sounding out amidst the raucous din of the soldiers.

"They . . . they've all been infected! They've got the _virus!"_

"Hurry! We've got to contain them before they can spread to the other games! Go, go, GO!"

Calhoun eased the cruiser a few feet further back into the Sugar Rush gate as the team of surge protectors, each armed with a menacing looking taser-gun, fanned out among the rioting Hero's Duty soldiers and tried to corral them together in a group . . . but Kohut and the others strategically maneuvered themselves in seemingly random, sporadic running patterns until suddenly, all at once they had positioned themselves one-on-one with the blue security squad, each soldier squaring off against one of the SPs like a man-to-man basketball defense. Then, with the precise coordination of separate fingers closing in to make a fist, the soldiers all pounced in unison on their individual opponents, expertly disarming and subduing them into full-Nelson submission holds practically before Ralph could blink.

The instant that every SP was locked in a wrestling grip with his head forcibly pointed down at the floor, Kohut shot them a firm, significant nod . . . and without making a sound, Calhoun ground her heel down on the accelerator pad, and the overburdened hoverboard eased precariously through the air in a beeline toward the Masterwork gate.

Ralph had to bite his lip to keep himself quiet as the cruiser wavered and swerved, Calhoun shifting her foot constantly over the controls in a desperate effort to keep the craft balanced and on course. Vanellope's hands were digging into his arm, her eyes wide as billiard balls, and Felix kept one gloved hand clamped over his mouth, as if physically holding in his squeaks of apprehension.

For eight agonizing seconds that seemed to last an eternity, the only sounds in the station were the cries and grunts and frantic voices of the SPs . . . and then, just like that, it was over. They had passed through the station without incident, the struggling cruiser had zoomed unnoticed through the Masterwork gate and the anteroom, and they were now submerged in the near pitch darkness of the tunnel leading into the game. For a split second, the blinding blackness all around them threw Ralph and the others into a semi-panic . . . but the next instant, Calhoun tapped her foot down on a button at the fore of the cruiser and switched on a blaring white headlight that clearly illuminated the passage in front of them, and they all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

"Jiminy _jaminy!" _Felix gasped, collapsing back against Ralph's left shoulder and pushing up the brim of his cap. Vanellope, on the other hand, let out a victorious giggle and sat bolt upright in his palm, pumping her fists in the air.

"HA! We did it! It _worked! _I can't believe it worked!Those blue bozos actually _fell for it!"_

"Yeah, well . . . keep your ponytail on, princess, we're not out of the woods yet," Calhoun muttered soberly as she directed the cruiser around loping bends in the Masterwork tunnel. "My men can only keep the SPs busy for so long before somebody figures out they're just stalling for time, and then the Program Coordinator is bound to put two and two together . . . so before that happens, we've got to talk to Mike, find out what she knows, and try to figure out what kind of virus we're up against here."

The hoverboard banked around a sharp corner as they drew closer and closer to the end of the tunnel, and Ralph found himself gulping back a dry lump forming in his throat. The mere thought of confronting Mike after what had happened that day in the station was almost enough to make his knees buckle . . . he had never been so simultaneously terrified and eager about anything in his life.

"And then . . . what? We go into the Masterwork code room and see if we can get rid of it from _there?"_ Felix suggested . . . but Calhoun pursed her lips and shook her head.

"I don't know, honey . . . something tells me this isn't your average code bug we're dealing with. I only hope Mike knows more about it than we do . . . we're gonna need all the information we can get."

_Information._

Ralph's ears perked up and his eyes widened as Calhoun's words and a blip of sound memory rising from his subconscious suddenly clashed together, and out sprang an idea.

_"It __**was **__amazing in there, though . . . wasn't it, Ralph? . . . . so much information . . . "_

"Calhoun!" he blurted out suddenly, making her swerve the cruiser a bit as she glanced back at him. "This is going to sound random, but . . . have you ever heard of something called the _Internet?"_

Felix and Vanellope blinked at him confusedly from their perches in his arms, but Calhoun scrunched half of her face incredulously and nearly steered them into the wall at the next gentle corner. Up ahead, the dim light at the end of the tunnel suddenly came into view.

_"Have I ever heard of . . . _Ralph, I'm the one who told YOU about the Internet, _remember?"_

"Right, right, I _thought _that was you! Okay, listen . . . what if I told you there was an entrance to the Internet in Mike's game? Do you think it's possible we could find some information on how to get rid of the virus _there?"_

Calhoun whipped her head back to look at him, her eyes bugging in their sockets. Without a word of warning, she suddenly slammed her heel down on the brakes of the cruiser and spun it around in a sharp one-eighty just as they came zooming out of the end of the tunnel and into Masterwork. Ralph, Felix, and Vanellope yelped out in unison as they were unceremoniously tossed off the back of the hoverboard and landed together in a bouncing heap on the grass. When Ralph looked up again, Calhoun was bristling incredulously down at him.

"There's an entrance to the Internet . . . _where!?" _she hissed between her teeth.

Ralph swallowed thickly, then raised his hand and pointed to the twin tunnel on the right, sitting quietly just a few feet over from the one through which they'd just come. Calhoun followed his finger with her gaze, and her jaw dropped.

"What the . . . _Ralph . . . _why in the MOTHER OF ALL FLAMING _MALWARE _didn't you mention this _SOONER!?"_

Ralph blinked, blanking like a deer in the headlight of the cruiser.

"I . . . I kind of forgot about it, until just now."

Calhoun just gaped at him in disbelief for another few seconds, then slapped her palm to her forehead and let out a ragged, exasperated groan.

Vanellope raised one eyebrow, looking confusedly back and forth between them. "Internet? What's the _Internet?"_

"Alright, NEW PLAN," Calhoun barked, ignoring the question and shaking her head as she dismounted the cruiser. "We talk to Mike, get everybody on the same page, and _then _we go on the Internet and run a search for symptoms of the virus. If we're lucky, there might even already be an anti-virus somewhere that we can download straight to this game."

"What _is _the Internet?" Vanellope repeated as the three of them got to their feet.

"Are you sure it's going to be as simple as that?" questioned Felix. "We've never even been to the Internet before, and I hear it's an _awfully _big place."

"Honey, my game is set in the distant _space age, _remember? I may have never been to the Internet in person, but I should hope I'm programmed with enough knowledge about it to run one simple _search."_

"For crying out loud, WHAT _IS THE INTERNET?" _Vanellope half-shrieked, making the three adults flinch and glance down at her.

"It's where we're going as soon as we talk to Mike," Calhoun muttered dismissively. Vanellope blew a frustrated puff of air through her lips, but the Fix-Its were too busy surveying the Masterwork landscape to notice her. Felix whistled as he trolled his gaze slowly over the mountains, and Ralph abruptly remembered that it was the first time they had ever set foot in Mike's game.

"My _land . . . _just look at this place! I've never _seen_ such a realistic game before! Is the weather always like this?"

It wasn't until Felix posed the question out loud that Ralph realized, with a start of surprise, that despite it not even being past noon yet, the atmosphere in Masterwork was nearly as dark as twilight. He glanced upward, and saw that this was because a heavy, overcast ceiling of clouds was blotting out the sun as far as the eye could see in every direction. It looked as if it were about to start downpouring at any moment.

"We can admire the scenery _after_ we've gotten rid of the virus," Calhoun snapped, turning impatiently toward Ralph. "So, let's get going already, Wreck-It! You know your way around here . . . take us where we need to go. Where does Mike live?"

The Fix-Its both stared at him expectantly, and he and Vanellope exchanged uncertain looks before glancing toward Mike's house . . . or rather, toward the spot on the shoreline where they knew that Mike's house would appear the moment they drew close enough to it. But the moment his eyes fell on the featureless stretch of coast, with the endless wash of dark gray stretching out to meet the horizon of the restless ocean . . . something inside him changed. The nervous, dry lump in his throat vanished, and he was suddenly filled with a hollow sensation of grim, absolute clarity.

All at once, Ralph knew exactly what he had to do . . . and even though Vanellope didn't speak or look up to meet his gaze again, he could read in the tone of her silence that she knew it as well he did. His brow lowered and his eyes slowly hardened as he looked at the empty shoreline . . . and then, with a strange, unfamiliar calmness surfacing in his voice, he turned back to the others.

"Actually . . . why don't you guys go on ahead and get started on the search without us? I think . . . I think I need to talk to Mike alone."

Felix started, and Calhoun opened her mouth as if she wanted to argue . . . but as he stared unblinkingly into their faces for another few seconds, understanding seemed to silently dawn on them, and in the end they both just nodded gravely.

". . . alright, then," Calhoun murmured, her tone suddenly dampening a bit. "We better get a move on, you two . . . we've wasted too much time here already." She strode quietly but deliberately back to the cruiser and mounted it, Felix and Vanellope following her in marked silence. The three of them rose into the air, then turned and looked back at him.

"I . . . I guess this is it, then," Felix solemnly held his hand out to Ralph, who shook it gently between his thumb and forefinger. "Good luck, brother."

Ralph nodded warmly, but said nothing.

"We'll start searching for information on the virus and anti-virus," Calhoun said gruffly, masking the emotion in her tone. "Hopefully, we won't have to go in too deep to find what we're looking for . . . but just to be safe, we should all rendezvous back here in no less than an hour to regroup . . . and I mean all _five _of us, Wreck-It."

She met his gaze for a split-second with a poignant stare. Ralph felt another pair of eyes pressing him, and glanced over to see Vanellope giving him a brave, encouraging smile.

"I told you, Ralph . . . everything's gonna be alright. You'll see."

His insides still felt horribly hollow and resigned, but he forced himself to smile back at her, gently rubbing his hand once on the top of her head and then stepping back.

"You guys better get going."

Calhoun nodded finitely, and Felix and Vanellope braced themselves on her legs as she spurred the cruiser jets to life, blasting them off in a swooping turnaround back to the entrance of the game. The three of them disappeared into the mouth of the tunnel on the right, and for another brief moment, Ralph stood there watching the dark opening with a quiet, sober look on his face . . . . then, he drew in one long, deep, steadying breath, turned around, and began walking down the footpath toward the shore.

He didn't even flinch as Mike's house appeared right on cue when he reached the end of the path, looming up before him in the gloomy gray light with an almost tired look about its brick exterior. Not daring to hesitate for another moment longer, lest he lose his nerve altogether, Ralph was just about to push open the front door and let himself in when suddenly, he stopped. Something about Mike's house was . . . _off. _Something was different. Narrowing his eyes thoughtfully, he took a small step back and tilted his head up to look once more over the building from the bottom floor up . . . and when his gaze reached the top, he abruptly realized what it was that was out of place.

All of the windows in Mike's house were dark, just empty panes reflecting the cold, pale light of the overcast sky . . . . all of them, that was, except the three that were set into the front wall of third floor.

It took Ralph less than a second to realize that not only had he completely forgotten that Mike's house even _had _a third floor, but that she herself had never so much as mentioned it even once . . . and now, as he stared up in bewilderment at the softly glowing third floor windows - one of them smashed in, with a few shards of glass still clinging to the frame - he knew, beyond a doubt, that there was no other place she could possibly be.

Ralph heaved another deep breath, set his jaw determinedly, and began climbing up the front side of the house, his sights fixed unmovingly on the broken window. As he drew steadily nearer and nearer to it, tormenting flashes of memory from earlier that day began to loop repeatedly in his head, almost as if they were maliciously trying to corrode his resolve and drive him back down the wall . . .

_TTTHHHHHWACK!_

_A familiar, searing stripe of pain slashing across his shoulders from behind . . . . the brush gripped in her hands . . . the cold, remorseless darkness in her eyes as she allowed them to manacle her hands behind her, as she looked up at him and said those words that had seemed to suck the very breath out of his body . . . ._

_"Go home, Ralph. Go home . . . and don't ever try to come near me again."_

He grit his teeth and steeled himself against the unbearable memory, forcing it back down into the depths of his subconscious as he grabbed the ledge at the bottom of the third story and heaved himself up to it . . . drawing nearer and nearer to Mike with every passing second.

_This is not over._

_This is __**not **__over._

_"My point, Ralph . . . is that people can surprise you," Felix had said, patting his arm with a soft smile as they sat together on the front stoop of his house the night of the DDR disaster. " . . . just because you didn't find your soulmate tonight, doesn't mean she's not out there. It just means you've got to keep looking. Don't give up."_

_Not over . . . __**not over **__. . ._

_" . . . you never know who might surprise you."_

Ralph reached his hand up for the ledge of the broken third-story window . . . and stopped. For one brief, final moment, he just hung there staring up at it, his heartbeat growing harder and faster and his chest starting to rise and fall shallowly with each breath. He squeezed his eyes shut and tucked his head down, trying with all his might to look down inside of himself and see past the hurt and the fear.

_He turned his head toward her, and the expression on her face made him go quiet. Her eyes were so wide and deep, he could see the reflection of the stars in them. _

_He turned his palm skyward and closed his fingers gently around her hand, encapsulating its warmth in a little ball that seemed to flutter against his skin like a heartbeat._

_Mike's hand moved inside of his._

_"I like you, Ralph."_

A sharp rush of air filled his lungs. Ralph opened his eyes, steeled his heart, and with one last might pull, heaved himself up through the paneless window and into the dim room of the third floor.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"The headlight isn't doing any good, sweetheart . . . there's just nothing to _see _in here."

Even though Felix was standing just inches away from her on the cruiser, the consuming darkness of the tunnel made his voice seem disembodied and faint, and Vanellope found herself holding on tighter to Calhoun's leg as an eerie shudder rippled down her spine.

"This place gives me the _creeps," _she muttered under her breath, darting her eyes uselessly through the blackness as the cruiser continued forward. "Are you _sure_ you know your way around here, Calhoun? I mean . . . you're not going to get us lost forever in the Internet, are you?"

"We're not in the Internet . . . not yet," she answered, picking up speed until Vanellope's ponytail began to whip behind her head like a flag. "Trust me, when we're there, I'll know it."

"Yeah . . . _that's _encouraging," Vanellope said sarcastically through clenched teeth. The cruiser abruptly accelerated again, this time almost making her lose her grip on Calhoun's leg.

"Er . . . Tammy? Don't you think you ought to _slow down a bit?" _Felix's yelped anxiously.

Vanellope heard Calhoun tapping her heel repeatedly on the control pad . . . but it only produced a frightening, hollow clicking sound.

"It's not me!" she growled. "The jets have _stopped . . . _something's pulling us!"

"Make it STOP!" Vanellope cried, tightening her hold so fiercely that the armor plates on Calhoun's calf creaked.

"Everybody just hold on!" she roared back, crouching down and wrapping one arm around each of them as they rocketed uncontrollably forward through the darkness. There were a few more seconds of silent, terrifying speed and blindness . . . and then, all of a sudden, Vanellope felt their velocity slowing, then shuddering to a gentle halt altogether, and the next thing she knew the platform of the cruiser was drifting away from her feet. She shot her eyes open, and was nearly blinded by an intense white light flooding every corner of her vision. She blinked repeatedly, looking all around her in stupefied awe.

"We . . . we're _floating! _Just like in one of the code rooms!"she cried out, turning to see the Fix-Its spinning slowly through the weightless white void beside her with matching expressions of amazement and alarm. The cruiser began to drift out of reach, and Calhoun quickly snatched it and slung it back over her shoulder.

"Is _this _the Internet, then?" Felix wondered aloud, slowly rotating his arms and legs as if he were trying to tread water.

Calhoun surveyed the empty abyss around them for a moment, then made a face.

"I don't think so. This looks more like some kind of . . . hey . . . _wait a minute_. What's that over there?"

Vanellope turned to look in the direction she was pointing, and not too far off, she spotted what looked like a gray game screen hovering in the middle of the whiteness . . . and in front of it - hanging stock still in mid-air at a slight angle so that from where they were, they couldn't quite make out the shapes or patterns on it - was a smaller second screen. Without exchanging another word, the three of them began awkwardly swimming toward it in unison.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As Ralph slowly squeezed through the empty window frame and took his first pace into the room, he found himself suddenly stepping on something sharp. Wincing and quickly drawing his foot back, he looked down and saw that the hardwood floor near the window was littered with shards of glass, and beneath the glass was a thick layer of dust, visible in the pale light shining in from outside. Carefully sidestepping away from what must have been the shattered remnants of the window pane, Ralph looked up and narrowed his eyes, peering forward through the dim light of the room . . . then stopped. He stood there, his hands hovering at his sides and his face slowly drawing in a blank, frozen stare.

Mike stared back at him.

She was kneeling in the middle of the room, and on the floor next her was a single lit candle in a brass holder that he vaguely remembered seeing on a side-table in her kitchen once before. The golden flame was flickering weakly and casting long, black shadows on the walls, revealing that the room, save for only one other object, was completely bare.

The other object was a chest . . . a large, wooden, iron-bound steamer trunk sitting in the center of the floor, and it was open. It was too dark for Ralph to see what was inside of it, but it's broad opening seemed to yawn beside Mike like a black, bottomless chasm.

For what felt like a small eternity, the two of them just stared silently at each other.

Mike's wild hair was illuminated with a gleaming halo of candlelight, her wide-eyed expression of disbelief darkened with harsh shadows. . . but even as he watched her, the shock was slowly, visibly draining out of her, until it had been replaced with the emptiest, weariest look of sorrow and resignation he had ever seen on another human countenance.

She stared sadly at him for a second longer . . . then, without saying a word, turned her back on him again and looked down at the open steamer trunk.

Another moment passed in complete silence, and just as he was on the verge of desperately blurting out the first thing that came to his mind . . . _just to have something, __**anything**__, to shatter the bonds of that awful, soul-crushing silence _. . . Mike finally spoke.

"You came."

It wasn't a question, or an exclamation, or even an observation . . . it was simply a statement, devoid of any astonishment or emotion.

"I thought . . . I was _afraid_ . . . you would find a way to come," she whispered emptily.

Ralph stared at the back of her head, his jaw working soundlessly for another moment. He had no idea what words were going to come out of his mouth until he already uttered them.

" . . . of course I came, Mike."

There was another short silence.

"How did you get through the gate?"

His narrowed his brow blankly. "What does it matter?"

"I mean . . . they didn't . . . you didn't . . . get _hurt . . . _trying to get in . . . did you?"

"No."

" . . . . . . you have to leave, Ralph."

His heart stirred fervently inside him for the first time since he'd laid eyes on her, and he took one step closer into the candlelight.

"You know I'm not leaving until you tell me what happened today."

She hunched further forward, and Ralph noticed for the first time that she was hugging something in her arms.

"I told you already," she whispered. "I told everyone. I'm . . . _I'm the virus, Ralph."_

"I don't believe you."

She jumped almost imperceptibly, then turned to look at him over her shoulder. Her eyes were suddenly shining in the soft light.

" . . . what?"

"I don't believe you're the virus, Mike," he repeated, shocking himself with the unwavering firmness of his own voice. "I believe that you, and your game, are _infected _with something that _might _be a virus. That isn't the same thing."

She squeezed her eyes shut and looked away again. "It might as well be the same."

"That's not _TRUE! _Don't you understand? What you have can be _cured, _Mike . . . the others, and I . . . we can help you! Please . . . just let us _help you."_

She tucked her chin closer to her chest and held the flat, square object in her arms even tighter.

"You can't help me, Ralph. _No one can."_

At this, raw heat flared up suddenly inside of him, and he clenched his hands into fists as he took another step toward her.

"Why are you doing this, Michelangela?" he demanded, his voice rising to a fierce volume that resonated off the bare walls of the room. "Why are you just . . . _giving up _like this!? What happened that you aren't telling me?"

_"Just go away, Ralph," _she whispered almost inaudibly.

"NO! I AM _NOT GOING AWAY!" _he shouted savagely, and with every syllable Mike shuddered and tried to curl in tighter on herself. He took the final step forward and closed the gap between them, bending over and seizing her by the shoulder, forcing her to turn and look at him. "I'M NOT GOING TO LEAVE UNTIL YOU _TELL ME WHAT - "_

As he pulled her around to face him, Mike let the small, square object in her hands fall down so that the light from the candle fell across it.

The moment his gaze focused down on the flat shape glinting in the semi-darkness . . . and he saw what it was . . . Ralph abruptly stopped yelling.

The tears that had been slowly gathering in the corners of Michelangela's eyes finally fell, streaking down her face and dripping from her chin onto the smooth, glass surface of the framed picture resting across her knees.


	40. Chapter 39: Phase Two

**A/N: **I'm back, babes!

I'll try not to blather too much here . . . but I just want to preface this chapter by saying that I know nothing - I mean absolute _squat _- about computer viruses and computer science in general. I willingly admit this. All the technical-sounding jaw in this chapter is just a bunch of jargon I picked up from Google searches in an attempt to make the descriptions sound even half-way legit. So, if you are someone who happens to know anything at all about how computer viruses actually work . . . please, _please,_ do not leave me any reviews pointing out all the obvious flaws in my reasoning. It's a necessary plot device for the story.

Enjoy, guys . . . it feels good to be back! Illustration for this chapter is now posted on my dA!

P.S. . . . bonus points and extra lives to anyone who can spot the WIR film-related anagram hidden in this chapter ( it's also in chapter 37, hint ).

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 39: Phase Two_

Calhoun's voice started off in a puzzled, questioning tone as she began quickly reading out loud the letter that was typed on the smaller of the two screens floating in the white void at the end of the tunnel . . . but as she went on, she grew steadily graver and quieter, until finally she was just barely uttering the words loud enough for Felix and Vanellope to hear . . . though it didn't matter, because they were both anxiously following every line with their eyes darting back and forth across the screen in front of them.

_**"'**__Re__**, **__some questions about recently purchased Masterwork console . . . . from, Homer Ciro, Tobikomi Gaming Inc., Customer Service/Technical support._

_Dear Mr. Stan Litwak . . . Allow me to apologize foremost for the tardiness of this reply to your inquiries. We have been having an exceedingly high number of very similar complaints from trial-purchasers of this particular game in all parts of the country, and it is our wish to address the individual concerns of as many valued customers as possible. In regard to your questions about your console, let me begin by briefly outlining the unexpected technical problems that have arisen with the entire PGC-Pr. 'Masterwork' line since its trial release._

_As you know, the entire Masterwork line is still only in its prototype phase of development, and is part of an experimental new marketing research venture by Tobikomi. A small number were released in select areas for a trial rental-period of six months in order to gauge user feedback and - dependent upon the enthusiasm of its reception - determine whether a more sophisticated version of the game will be green-lit for production. _

_Due to time constraints and some transitional hiccups in this unusual promotion, the prototype consoles were released to arcades with several of the in-game features left unfinished. While their inoperability does not interfere with basic game-play, a certain set of technological problems has arisen with one of these incomplete features in particular - the online gaming capability. _

_It seems that because of certain failsafe protections not yet programmed into the game, the software is highly vulnerable to a new hybrid of polymorphic worm - a web-based virus which the game almost invariably contracts within twenty-four hours of its first connection to the Internet. Most trial users of the Masterwork line have connected their consoles to the Internet in attempt to enable the incomplete online-gaming feature, and have contracted this virus as a result. As of now, the worm is untreatable, and over time is fatal to the integrity of the unfinished software. Obliteration of the game's programming normally occurs about five to eight days following contraction. _

_In response to your question regarding the error message that appeared on your console screen . . . to my knowledge, this particular glitch has not been reported from any of our other trial users, and my best guess is that this is probably an isolated fluke, generated by a random overlap of unfinished programming segments. However, because you succeeded in connecting your console to the Internet, the probability that the game will, or already has been, infected with the worm, is extremely high. _

_At this point in time, Tobikomi is issuing a general recall of the defective Masterwork line and offering a full refund with total cancellation of rental contracts to all trial-purchasers of the game. If your console is exhibiting any signs of malfunction, you are entitled to return the game at any point within the first half of your contracted rental period in exchange for this refund. If, for any reason, you still wish to keep your console for the duration of the six-month rental period, you are free to do so . . . however, due to the inoperable nature of these programming errors, Tobikomi is no longer offering any permanent purchase of the prototype consoles at the end of the rental period. All consoles must be returned to distributors at the end of the trial period._

_As of the date of this message, the continuation or cancellation of the PGC 'Masterwork' line is still undecided, but Tobikomi will be issuing an official statement on its production to customers within the next calendar year. _

_We at Tobikomi Gaming Inc. appreciate your participation and patience throughout this experimental venture, and hope that we may continue to enjoy your business in the future._

_Sincerely . . . Homer Ciro, Head of Technical Customer Services.'"_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

For the first full minute after he had looked down and seen, in the flickering candlelight, what was behind the tear-spattered glass of the framed picture in Mike's hands, Ralph couldn't speak. He just stared silently down at it, his lips parted and his eyes narrowed in bewildered disbelief.

It was a picture of two people, sitting beside each other on a stretch of rocky beach that he immediately recognized as the coastline of Masterwork on a bright, sunlit afternoon. The person on the left was Michelangela . . . and the person on the right, with his right arm wrapped affectionately around her shoulders and his eyes closed as he planted a kiss on her temple, was someone whom Ralph had never seen before, yet whose name he knew immediately, beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt.

He was a thin, wiry-looking young man, who would have been tall if he were standing, and he had a wild crop of curly auburn hair that just slightly resembled Mike's, though much darker and shorter. His skin was tanner than hers, and freckle-less, and instead of a painter's smock he wore green pants, a T-shirt, and a white work-apron with several pockets along the front.

The two of them were smiling happily as they sat together on the beach. Michelangela's mouth was frozen open in a snort of laughter, and the cheerfulness of the couple virtually beamed out beyond the boundaries of the photograph with a warm glow that, in the dimness and desolation of the third-floor room, seemed cruelly perverse.

When Ralph finally found his voice again after the deadening silence of that first minute, it came out in a hoarse, almost devastated whisper . . . because with one glance at that photograph, nearly everything that had been maddeningly mysterious to him just seconds before seemed to have become utterly, horribly transparent.

" . . . . _Artemisio_."

Her face streaked with tears, Mike glanced up at him with a brief glint of confusion in her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was even drier and raspier than his.

"Ye . . . yes, but . . . how did you . . . ?"

Ralph couldn't take his eyes off of the picture in her hands. "S-Sunday morning . . . during the reset . . . it . . . it was written on your mailbox . . . "

Mike narrowed her brow, looking for a moment as if she wanted to demand incredulously why he had never mentioned this to her ( in full honesty, he had forgotten all about it after their first exploration of the Internet ) . . . but the next instant, she faded back into miserable indifference and lowered her eyes back down to the photograph, wiping away the teardrops on the glass with the edge of her hand.

"I broke my promise, Ralph," she whispered emptily. "I went back into the tunnel. I went back to Litwak's computer, and I found . . . a message. A message about my game that explained everything. And the moment I read it, I just . . . something just turned on inside, like a lightbulb, and suddenly I knew his name. I knew that he was . . . he was supposed to be a part of this world, once. He was supposed to be a part of _my _world."

Mike paused, turning her bleary eyes once around the bare walls of the room, then looked back at Ralph with the faintest hint of a heartbroken smile.

"This would have been his studio, if they had ever finished it - if they had ever finished _him. _This is the only thing they _did_ finish, the only thing in the game that's his . . . that _would have _been his."

She pointed solemnly toward the open steamer trunk beside her, and Ralph - feeling completely numb, as distant and detached as if all of it were some kind of awful dream unfolding before him - slowly leaned over to look inside of it. Most of the wooden chest was empty, but resting at the bottom was a small, scattered collection of rustic tools . . . hammers, chisels, files, icepicks, and other delicate metal instruments that terminated in varying hooks and points.

"A sculptor," Mike whispered. "That's what he would have been. We would have gone together, the two of us . . . a painter, and a sculptor."

Two of her words stung unexpectedly inside of him and broke him partially out of his disbelieving numbness, and Ralph felt his blank expression crumbling as he looked up from the trunk.

"Gone . . . _gone together?" _he repeated hollowly. "Do you . . . do you mean that you, and he . . . you . . . y-you were supposed to be . . . ?"

Mike hung her head, as if she couldn't bear to look him in the eye.

"I don't know. That's almost the worst part of it . . . I don't anything more about him. I don't know how old he was . . . _would have _been . . . what he would have sounded like . . . I don't know if he was programmed to be my friend, my brother, my . . . m-my . . . " she trailed off and was silent for a moment, then squeezed her eyes shut and covered them with her hand. When she spoke again, her voice was thick and half-choked. "He never got to exist, Ralph. How could they do that to him? How could they write him into the game . . . give him a name, and a face, and begin making things that would belong to him . . . make this _picture _of us . . . and then just _stop?_ Leave him unfinished . . . never even give him a chance to exist? Why . . . why am _I _here, instead of him?"

Ralph stared helplessly at her as more tears began to roll down her cheeks. In the back of his mind were a dozen different ideas of things that he could say to try and comfort her . . . . that game developers could be fickle and careless . . . that they changed their minds about things, and sometimes left whole sections of code unfinished, for reasons that it would be pointless for them or any other character to ever try to rationalize . . . that this Artemisio was just another ghost in the programming, that that sort of thing had been known to happen before, and there was nothing anyone could do about it, it was just a hard fact of life . . . . but he didn't say any of them. None of them would have meant anything to her, done her even the slightest bit of good.

So for a long moment, Ralph just knelt there on the floor beside her, watching as she cried silently, and hating himself for every second of his uselessness. Then, she startled him by stopping abruptly and lowering her hand from her watery eyes, looking straight ahead at nothing.

"But then . . . " she said softly, with an indiscernible lilt of what was almost laughter, " . . . I suppose, when it comes down to it, we're really almost the same. I'm not finished, either. I'm an experiment . . . a defective prototype, just like he is. The only difference is that they decided to give me a body."

This statement sent a heartrending jolt piercing through Ralph's chest, and drew his voice out in a horrified blurt.

"That's not true. That's not _true."_

Mike just smiled, almost invisibly. "Either way . . . it doesn't really matter anymore. The virus - "

"The virus can be STOPPED, Mike!" Ralph interrupted her frantically, an emotional panic seizing him at the fatal surrender in her tone. It wasn't until she looked up at him that he realized he had grabbed her by the shoulders with both hands. "We're going to find a way to get rid of it! I _swear on my life, _Mike, I'm going to find a way to _cure you!"_

But even as he was shouting in her face, she shook her head slowly back and forth with the unbreakable calmness that only comes after one has given up completely on everything.

"There _is no way_," she muttered quietly, lifting her hand up to his, as if she were trying to comfort _him. _"The message said so. My game, and everything in it, is infected with a virus that has no cure. It's . . . it's going to destroy me, and my game, Ralph. And there's nothing you, or anyone else can do about it."

"NO! _NO!_" he cried stubbornly, desperately, gripping her tighter and tighter in his hands without realizing it. _"_There has to be something . . . _anything . . . _I'll take you out of here, I'll take you somewhere where it can't - "

"It won't _help_, Ralph. The virus is in my _code . . _. and any time now, it's going to obliterate my programming, whether I stay inside Masterwork or not."

He felt his anger rising, then instantly crumbling in the face of the unacceptable reality that was slowly closing in around him.

_This couldn't be . . . no, __**no**__, this couldn't be happening . . . . _

The breath was beginning to choke up in his throat, and Ralph shook his head in hopeless denial.

"There _has _to be," was all he could bring himself to stammer, his vision suddenly growing clouded and the light from the candleflame distorting in a watery blur. "There has to be s-_something . . . "_

Mike smiled at him . . . the saddest, sweetest smile he had ever seen.

"Even if you _could_ get rid of the virus . . . in the end, it wouldn't make any difference. I'm just a prototype . . . a trial version of a game that may not ever be made. Litwak only rented me for six months, as a test-run . . . even if I somehow managed to survive the virus, it's still only a matter of time before I would be unplugged and sent back."

"You could leave before that happened," Ralph blurted miserably, not even believing himself anymore, but just crying out whatever despairing grasps at hope came to him. "You could come and live in my game . . . with me."

She shook her head softly again.

"The message only said for sure that the virus is definitely fatal to _unfinished _programming . . . but that's not a chance I'm willing to take. That's why I let them lock me in here. I've already caused everyone so much pain and fear by infecting them with a little code malfunction . . . I could never risk exposing them to the virus for so long that it might find a way to destroy their programming, the way its going to destroy mine. I couldn't let that happen to _anyone_, Ralph . . . . _and_ _especially not to you."_

She lifted one hand up to his face, and gently laid it over his cheek.

It was too much. The moment she touched him, he could bear it no longer . . . he tore himself away and pushed dizzily to his feet, turning his back on her so that she wouldn't see the faint glisten of moisture he dashed out of his eyes with the heel of his hand. He tried to draw in a slow, steadying breath, and only succeeded in making himself choke up even further.

"It doesn't make sense," he muttered, his voice cracking and an almost hysterical anger tightening suddenly in his chest. "It doesn't make _any sense. _I've been with you more than anyone . . . if this virus is so bad, so _dangerous, _then why hasn't it infected _me? _Why hasn't it infected _ME?"_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

For a long moment after she had finished reading the email, Calhoun, Felix, and Vanellope just floated speechlessly in front of it, staring at the screen with matching expressions of confusion and horror. The silence of the white void around them was deafening.

"Then this . . . all of this . . . it really is because of Mike," Vanellope whispered suddenly, her wide eyes narrowing in a simultaneous combination of understanding and a half-hearted refusal to understand. "She . . . she really did bring that virus into the arcade."

There was another grim, weighted silence.

"There isn't a single game in the arcade that that virus hasn't infected through at least one character," Felix uttered lowly. "Does this . . . does this mean that everyone it's come in contact with is going to . . . to . . . ?"

"No," Calhoun dismissed sharply, her voice betraying her with a hoarse, frightened croak. She cleared her throat and continued. "No . . . it says that the virus is only fatal to un_finished _programs."

_"'As of now,'" _Felix quoted gravely, pointing to the bottom of the fourth paragraph. "Untreatable, and fatal to unfinished programming, _as of now . . . _but what if the virus _mutates _and learns to attack other kinds of programming? The entire arcade could be destroyed in a matter of _days!_"

"Days," Vanellope said suddenly, with a note of panic rising in her voice. "_Days_ . . . it says the virus obliterates programming in five to eight days!"

Calhoun and Felix both looked at her sharply, a cold shudder rippling through them as they abruptly realized what she was getting at . . . but neither of them were able to bring themselves to say it out loud.

Vanellope's eyes darkened fearfully. "Masterwork was plugged in on Monday . . . _eight days ago."_

For a split-second of pure, dead horror, the three of them stared at each other . . . then, with an abrupt, hysterical cry, Vanellope began running her hands through her hair and scanning her eyes rapidly over the email screen.

"It _can't _be untreatable! There has to be something we can do!" she nearly shrieked. "We can't just let Mike _die! _There's gotta be something in here we missed, something that can _help her_ . . . _!"_

Calhoun felt as if she had been paralyzed. Her mouth had gone dry as cotton, and she stared at Vanellope and the email screen almost without seeing them, her mind reeling desperately for any shred of an idea, any possible option they had left . . . when suddenly, something at the bottom of the screen caught her eye. It was a tiny footnote she hadn't noticed before, just a small tab of letters tucked quietly near the lower left edge of the window. Her eyes narrowing sharply, she instinctively reached out and tapped it with her fingertips.

Instantly, another window appeared in front of the first, just slightly smaller and containing more paragraphs of writing. Vanellope gasped in alarm, and Felix's eyes went wide as he drifted an inch closer.

"It . . . it's an attachment," Calhoun muttered in breathless disbelief. "Mike must not have seen it!"

"What does it say? _What does it say!?" _Vanellope cried frantically.

Her voice nearly trembling, Calhoun cleared her throat again and began reading from the second screen out loud.

_"'This polymorphic worm, alias .670 ( better known by its colloquial nickname, the 'Love Bug' virus, because of its origination on a series of corrupted personal dating websites ), is especially damaging to code-writing software and partially developed programs' . . . _this . . . this is an information dossier on Mike's virus!"

_"Keep reading!"_ Vanellope and Felix urged her in unison.

Calhoun swallowed thickly and ran her eyes along the next several lines of text. Most of the page was in complicated, technical language that she didn't quite understand, but finally she came to a section that seemed to be written in layman's terminology. She wet her lips anxiously before reading it aloud.

_"' . . . the primary function of the Love Bug virus is to first steal, then corrupt information. It does this by spreading the infection through a secondary transmitter strain and making copies of key information in all the programs it infects. The virus can circulate undetected through a computer for days or weeks, infecting multiple programs via the same transmitter, and then later appropriate all the stolen information back to the host program. _

_Once the host program has acquired all available information in a contained system, it uses the stolen data to transmute itself into a mutated kill program that corrupts or destroys all code within the radius of its influence. As of now, no anti-virus for the Love Bug has yet been created, and there is no effective means of combatting the worm once it has been contracted. The following websites are known spreaders of the Love Bug and should be avoided at all costs . . . . '"_

There was a bulleted list of names following the paragraph, but Calhoun didn't bother to read them. Her voice had trailed off in a hollow whisper, and as she turned to look at Felix and Vanellope, she saw that their faces were both pale and drawn with the same expression of horrified comprehension.

"So . . . if . . . in its final stage . . . the virus _is_ going to mutate, and de . . . _d-destroy _everything around it . . . " Felix said quietly in a choked murmur of dread, " . . . and . . . it's been more than seven days since Mike . . . since she . . . then, that means . . . . "

He paused, and suddenly Vanellope's eyes grew wide with a flash of unmitigated terror.

_"Ralph!"_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph had been standing with his back to Michelangela for less than thirty seconds when the miserable silence in the room was suddenly pierced by a gasping cry of pain, followed quickly by a sickening, crystalline _crick._

Ralph jumped and whirled around to see Mike doubling over forward onto the floor, her back arched like a cat and her hair blanketing the sides of her face as her forehead came down to meet the dusty floorboards. His heartbeat surged up into his throat, and in his startled panic he momentarily forgot everything else and dove back down to his knees beside her.

"Mike? _MIKE?" _he cried frantically, laying one hand over her back and trying to make her look up at him. "Mike, what is it!?"

She was groaning continually now, softly and despairingly as if something were paining her excruciatingly from the inside. She abruptly sat up again, tossing her head and her torso backwards as she writhed. Ralph saw that the small _crick _sound he'd heard was the glass pane of the picture frame cracking suddenly as she gripped it too tightly in her hands. Her knuckles were white and clamped around it in a death grip, but before he could try to take it from her she had collapsed forward again.

"MIKE! _MIKE!"_

He was openly panicking now, and the only thing he seemed able to make himself do was shout her name as his hands hovered helplessly over her. Then, as she was still moaning in agony and rocking gently from side to side on her face, something happened that made the pounding heartbeat in his throat seem to stop dead altogether.

From out of nowhere, a blinding streak of wriggling blue light had suddenly materialized in the air in front of him . . . and before he could even open his mouth to gasp, the snake-like form had dived down nose-first into Mike's back and vanished inside of her, passing through the material of her smock as if it were no more solid than the surface of a pond.

For a full second, Ralph was completely paralyzed in horror.

Then, three more of the glowing snakes appeared and also phased into Mike's body . . . then four, then five, then so many at once that Ralph couldn't tell where one of them began and another ended, all flowing down and vanishing into her back like an unholy, electric-blue waterfall.

With a guttural, deep-throated cry that was equal parts fear, fury and disgust, Ralph swung both arms wildly at the stream of blue shapes in a desperate effort to knock them away from her . . . but his hands simply phased straight through them, not even slowing them down on their perpetual course. The only effect his attempts produced was a short, ear-splitting screech of rage that emanated unmistakably from the creatures themselves.

Not knowing what else he could possibly do, Ralph tossed his head around the bare room, searching desperately for the source of the horrifying apparitions . . . and only then did he realize that they were coming in through the broken window, flying straight through it in a twisting, uniform line, rising up toward the ceiling, and then plunging back down to disappear into Mike's body.

Ralph immediately scrambled to his feet and tried to block off the open window with his hands, but once again the worm-like things passed through him as easily as if he weren't there at all. With a panting, frenzied sweat beginning to bead on his temples, Ralph peered out through the next window to his right and saw that the stream of creatures was coming from the tunnel on the left, glowing sinisterly in the overcast dimness outside.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Faster! _Faster!" _Vanellope commanded shrilly, her fingertips digging into the creases of Calhoun's leg armor as the three of them rocketed back through the blackness toward Masterwork.

"I'm going as fast as I can! The engines are almost out of juice!" she snarled back, jamming her heel repeatedly on the accelerator and only managing to achieve a few sporadic bursts of momentum.

"Please, Tammy, try to hurry!" Felix muttered anxiously from her other side, holding his hat down on his head with one hand and peering forward at the faint, distant gray glow that had just appeared up ahead of them. "We're almost there . . . we've got to get back to the game before Michelangela - "

_"AAAgh!" _

Felix was suddenly interrupted by a ragged, gasping cry from his wife, and even though it was still too dark to see anything, he instinctively snapped his head up to look in her direction with a sharp twinge of fear.

"Tammy!? Tammy, what - "

"AAAGH-_ha!"_

Before he could finish, Calhoun doubled over and nearly collapsed to her knees on the hoverboard, making it buck and swerve dangerously from side to side. The light at the end of the tunnel up ahead was now rapidly approaching, and all at once it was just barely bright enough for them to make out one another. Felix's heart dropped into his stomach like a stone when he saw that his wife's face was twisted in a grimace of pain, one hand clutching at her stomach as she struggled to balance herself on one knee and keep piloting the cruiser with the other foot.

"What's wrong with her!?" Vanellope cried frantically, teetering on the edge of the board and gripping Calhoun's arm for dear life.

Felix opened his mouth to try and answer . . . but suddenly, something invisible had hit him like a punch in the chest, and before he could muster a reply all of the wind had been knocked out of him. Everything began to swim madly around him, and in the corner of his eye he caught one fleeting glimpse of a brilliant, electric blue stream of light shooting out of his wife's torso and rocketing down the tunnel ahead of them like a bolt of lightning. Then, there was a sharp, shuddering _SSSKRUD _as the forward tip of the cruiser dipped down and made contact with the floor of the tunnel . . . and after that, everything was a dark, spinning blur of shadow and motion.

Felix, Calhoun and Vanellope were thrown clear off of the hoverboard as it went somersaulting down the last stretch of tunnel for a few seconds, then finally crashed into the wall. The three of them were airborne for what felt like an impossibly long moment of pure silence . . . and then, the next thing Felix knew, he was hitting the ground at speed, landing on his side with jolting impact and then skidding forward another fifteen feet until he found himself lying, dazed and hopelessly disoriented, just a few lengths short of the tunnel opening.

For another brief moment, Felix couldn't focus on anything but the fierce stabs of pain that were constricting his insides, gripping his chest with both gloved hands and gritting his teeth to keep from crying out . . . and then, like a torrent of tangible energy leaving his body, a blue snake of electric light abruptly went bursting out from his torso, exactly the way it had from his wife seconds before. The writhing stream went flying away into Masterwork and quickly vanished from sight.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It was exactly a quarter past twelve on Tuesday afternoon, the day after the complete shutdown of Litwak's arcade, when the medical officer who had stayed behind in Hero's Duty to look after two recovering victims of the virus - privates Janowitz and Markowski - suddenly heard a loud, wailing cry of pain resonating from the sickbay down the hall, where the infirm soldiers had been bed-ridden for nearly two days. In a startled panic, the medic immediately leapt up from his chair and bolted down the short corridor, throwing himself through the open doorway of the infirmary just in time to see what looked like two glowing, intangible blue snakes bursting out from the chests of Janowitz and Markowski, then shooting straight up and disappearing into the ceiling.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

On the other side of the arcade, inside the Mortal Kombat console, Johnny Cage - still weak from his recent code malfunction - had just staggered into the mens' bathroom of the fighters' dormitory, and was splashing cold water over his sweating face when a crippling pain suddenly seized in his chest. He let out a haggard gasp and slowly dropped to his knees on the floor, the tap in the sink still running, his mouth open and his eyes bugged as the pain intensified.

After a few seconds of inexplicable agony, he suddenly felt as if all of the twisting energy inside him was collecting itself into a single ball, pulsing against the wall of his stomach . . . and then, in a shock of electric blue light, it came shooting out of him in the shape of what looked like a three foot long, wriggling worm as thick as his wrist.

The worm phased through the wall and was gone. Overcome with a dizzying swoon of fatigue and disbelief, Johnny stared uncomprehendingly for a few seconds at the spot in the bathroom tile through which the creature had vanished . . . then, dripping with sweat, he collapsed on the floor in a cold faint.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"A little further!" Cammy tilted her head back and called up to Chun-Li, who was looking down at her through the open hatch in the ceiling above the Street Fighter II code room, which was located in the third basement level of the game, underneath the training arenas. Chun-Li obediently fed out a few more feet of the rope to which Cammy was clinging, lowering her into the heart of the game's code. Glowing, pale red boxes interconnected with flashing threads surrounded her in a complex nest of programming, and just a few feet ahead of her she spotted the exact code box she'd been looking for.

"That's enough! I _found it!" _she shouted to Chun-Li, who abruptly held the rope fast.

Her throat dry and her heart pounding, Cammy reached to grab hold of Zangief's code module, hoping against hope that there would be something, _anything _she could do to remove the virus from it . . . when suddenly, without warning, the box with the Russian wrestler's name printed across it began to glow more brightly with rapid, almost violent pulses of strange blue light. Her brow knitting in confusion, Cammy slowly turned the code box around, studying it, and being careful not to twist up the numerous threads feeding in and out of it.

When she laid eyes on the fat, glowing blue leech that was latched onto the side of the module with countless lithe feelers embedded in the surface, Cammy almost lost her grip on the rope, reeling back and letting out a horrified shriek . . . but the very next instant, the leech seemed to transmute into a wriggling stream of light no more solid than a sunbeam, and before she could so much as breathe the thing had detached itself from Zangief's code box and gone shooting straight up toward the hatch. She heard Chun-Li cry out in shock as it went hurtling past her.

At that exact moment, two floors above them in the Russian industrial section of the Street Fighter world, an identical blue streak had burst from Zangief's chest and flown up to meet its twin, the two of them intertwining and zooming as one across the many-colored sky, straight out through the exit of the game.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Kohut and his small contingent of soldiers had been playing a one-sided, continual game of cat-and-mouse with the hopelessly overpowered squad of surge protectors for about thirty minutes when all of a sudden, something happened that made he and all the rest of them abruptly stop what they were doing and stare, utterly amazed and terrified, up into the open air of Game Central Station.

All at once, flying like rockets out of every single game gate in the transit, there were lights . . . dozens upon dozens of them . . . long, blue, lithe snakes of light that zipped over their heads in unified streams, like tributaries of an airborne river all funneling into the same channel. Kohut speechlessly followed the flow of the channel with his eyes, and saw that the legions of blue creatures were all flying into the Masterwork gate.

It was only when one of his men let out a startled cry of disgust that Kohut jerked his head down and saw that each of the surge protectors had suddenly collapsed on the floor, and that one of the blue worms had phased out of each of their bodies and gone up to join in with the streams of their ghastly brethren.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

After what felt like hours of looking on in helpless revulsion and despair as Mike roiled in pain on the floor in front of him - but in reality, had been less than sixty seconds - all of a sudden, the stream of glowing blue streaks ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Mike let out a final, shuddering moan, then went completely still and silent.

Ralph's immediate desire was to seize her up in his arms and carry her straight out of the game . . . but as he stood there staring at her, his face pale and his chest heaving shallowly, he discovered that he couldn't move. Whether it was a result of shock, or horror - or even fear, at what might happen next - he didn't know . . . but whatever the reason, his feet may as well have been fastened to the floor, and his entire body felt heavy as lead.

"M-Mike? . . . . _Mike?" _he croaked out anxiously. "Mike . . . can you hear me?"

For a few seconds, she neither moved nor made a sound, and with a sickening twist inside of him, Ralph became so terrified he could scarcely breathe . . . but then, she suddenly shifted, pushing herself up ever so slowly on her hands and knees, her face hidden behind the curtain of her hair. The broken picture frame lay on the floor beneath her.

_"Mike!"_ he gasped thankfully, still unable to will himself to move. "You're _alive!"_

Her back was beginning to rise and fall as her breath quickened, and after a moment, she straightened up and lifted her head. With trembling hands, she pulled the hair out of her face, revealing a bloodless countenance and wide, frightened eyes. She and Ralph met each other's gaze, and for another moment neither of them said anything.

"Mike . . . are you . . . are you _okay?"_

She hesitated, her chest still heaving and her face ghostly pale, with a haunted expression lingering about her features . . . then, she began to nod slowly.

"Y-yeah . . . I . . . I think so . . . I think - "

_TTTSSZZYYEEEEEEEEEIIIII!_

Two things happened simultaneously.

The first was that Mike's voice was abruptly cut off and drowned out by the loudest, most horrible electronic screech Ralph had ever heard in his life. It made his teeth clench and his eyes roll back for an instant in their sockets.

The second thing was that Mike's arms went limp at her sides, her head lolled back so that her face was pointed up toward the ceiling . . . and all at once, brilliant blue light was spilling out of her eyes and mouth.

For another split-second, everything was eerily still.

Then, there was a second ear-piercing, blood curdling shriek exactly like the first - except that instead of stopping after a few seconds, it continued on indefinitely, shattering the very air itself and ringing in Ralph's ears until he was almost deaf to it - and Mike bent over double, gripping the sides of her head in both hands and opening her glowing mouth in an inaudible scream.

_This was it. There could be no mistaking it._

_" . . . it's going to destroy me, and my game, Ralph. And there's nothing you, or anyone else can do about it . . . . the virus is in my __**code **__. . . and any time now, it's going to obliterate my programming."_

_This was it._

_It was over._

Mike squeezed her eyes shut, her face twisting in anguish, but the blue light was still shining visibly through the crease of her eyelids, through the cracks of her clenched teeth as she grimaced in pain.

_"Do you have a name?" she had whispered, grasping the edge of the door with both hands and leaning forward against it, pinning him with such a look of hopeful desperation that it almost paralyzed him for a few seconds._

_"Ah . . . y, yeah, I . . . I have a name."_

_Her eyes lit up even brighter. "You do? What is it?"_

_"It's . . . Ralph. Wreck-It Ralph."_

_She looked up at him, and for a split second he thought he saw the faintest glimmer of a smile pass over her mouth._

_"Ralph," she repeated softly._

Mike reared back and opened her mouth in another scream that was drowned out by the continual, terrible shriek of the virus . . . and all at once, Ralph felt something enormous inside of him give way. His devastated, horror-struck stare of helplessness was suddenly replaced with an inexplicable calmness . . . because he knew, very suddenly - without any possible explanation as to how he knew it, other than that he simply _knew -_ exactly what it was that he had to do.

He had felt that kind of inner calmness only once before in his life.

_"This is the place where you learned how to sacrifice everything for someone you love. You've had that lesson in you ever since, but . . . after all this time . . . maybe you just needed a little reminder."_

_Over?_

**_No_**_._

_This was not over._

All of a sudden, he could move again.

Ralph crossed the space of floor between them in two steps, dropped to his knees, and took the sides of Michelangela's face in his hands, tilting it up towards him as she continued to writhe in pain and the electronic screech continued to rend the air around them in constant, chaotic torture . . . so that when he spoke, he had to raise his voice to its highest possible volume just for the words to be felt, vibrating almost mutely in the few inches between his face and hers.

_"Give it to __**me, **__Mike. Give the virus to me. Let it take me, instead of you."_

Her eyes shot open, and the light pouring out of them was so bright that every last glimmer of green had been extinguished in the cold, consuming blue . . . and Ralph felt the last inch of his heart break.

_"Give to me, Mike! GIVE IT TO __**ME**__!"_

He crashed his lips down on top of hers.

The screeching instantly stopped, and everything in the dark, shadowy room became still. Mike was rigid as a statue. For one moment, time ceased, and the entire world was absolutely silent.

Then . . . high above them, beyond the limit of the ceiling . . . the sky outside was torn apart by a blinding pierce of white lightning and the deafening thunderclap that followed.

_KKKRRBOOOOOOOM!_

Rain began to pummel down on the rooftop like a hail of bullets, but Ralph barely heard it.

The terrible screech of the virus had started up again . . . but this time, it was so immediate and so unbearable that he knew he was no longer hearing it in the room around him, but inside of his own head.

Something was passing from Mike's body into his through the contact of their lips, like a current of living electricity that burned and fluctuated. It was filling him with an indescribable sensation, at once the most awful and the most amazing he had ever experienced. It was like being crushed by a great weight, lofted by an incredible buoyancy, scorched with intense heat, and doused with freezing water, all at the same time.

He pushed his fingers into Mike's hair and kissed her harder . . . and the soft give of her motionless lips was the last thing he felt before everything slipped into darkness.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Mike sucked in a ragged, gasping breath of air as Ralph's face was abruptly torn away from hers, and vision suddenly flooded back into her light-blinded eyes so quickly that tears streaked down her cheeks. Her strength utterly gone, she collapsed to her hands and knees on the floor, her chest heaving and the world reeling around her like the inconstant landscape of a frightening dream.

But it wasn't a dream. She had been conscious through every second of it, inescapably aware of everything as the many legs of the many-legged creature that had come out of the tunnel on the right were drawn back into her, drawn back to the nesting-place of their hideous master . . . which had then begun it's excruciating assault on her very programming, working to distort and destroy everything that had ever made her _her._

But then _he had kissed her_ . . . and all at once, just like that, he had taken it away . . . taken all of it away, into himself and out of her . . . and now, there she was - weak, and terrified, and empty . . . at long last, finally _empty _of everything.

Everything . . . except for a small, fluttering warmth that had almost seemed to enter in exchange as the virus had gone out. She didn't know what the fluttering was, or even if it were really there at all . . . all that she knew for certain was that the virus had left her. The wall around her consciousness had vanished as if it had never been . . . and for the first time in her life, her mind was absolutely free. Her whole body trembling, not knowing whether she wanted to laugh out loud or burst into hysterical sobbing, Mike slowly raised her head up to look at Ralph . . . and stopped.

Whatever disbelieving spark of new hope and courage that had been lit inside her by the exodus of the virus was instantly extinguished.

"R . . . Ralph?"

He had staggered away from her and fallen to one knee beside the broken window, hunched over and holding himself off the floor with his knuckles. He was panting heavily, the curve of his back rising and falling in rapid rhythm. His head was hung low, his face hidden from her.

But it wasn't any of these things that stilled her heartbeat with an icy fist and gripped her with a kind a fright that, until that moment, she hadn't know existed . . . it was the soft, blue glow, reflecting off the wall at the place where his head was hanging.

And it was the fact that, as she continued to stare at him, she suddenly realized that the rise of Ralph's shoulders were six inches higher than they had been five seconds earlier.

The next instant, she became aware of a faint, almost imperceptible noise of creaking and stretching . . . then, without warning, a seam on the sleeve of Ralph's shirt abruptly split, and she clamped a hand over her mouth to silence her horrified yelp.

_He was growing._

Ralph's chest and back were heaving harder and harder, his breath growing faster and more ragged, the blue glow that she now knew could be emanating from nowhere but his eyes and mouth growing brighter and brighter . . . . and inch by inch, second by second, Ralph himself was _growing larger. _A second, then a third, then a fourth seam ripped open in his flannel shirt as the muscles on his arms and chest swelled to four, then five times their normal size. The arch of his back rose higher and higher from the floor, until it nearly grazed the ceiling . . . his hands and feet, which had always been large, were suddenly big enough to crush her entire body in a single grasp. His overalls stretched until they were taught as a drum over his rippling back . . . the floorboards suddenly let out a sharp, wailing _creak _under his seismic weight . . . and then, all at once, everything stopped, and his heavy breathing became quiet and still.

Michelangela was so paralyzed with confusion and horror that she could barely bring herself to speak.

" . . . . _Ralph?" _she uttered hollowly, in a whisper so low that she herself scarcely heard it.

Ralph gave no sign that he heard her. For another brief, breathless moment, he kneeled silently on the floor, his massive shape now filling almost half of the room.

There was a sudden gust of wind through the broken window, and the flame of the candle was blown out in a flicker of smoke, casting the room deeper into shadow.

That was when Ralph rolled calmly onto his feet, straightened up, and broke the rafters of the ceiling with his shoulders.

Mike let out a cry of alarm and covered her head with her arms as three of the heavy wooden beams overhead snapped into two as if they'd been no thicker than toothpicks, and gales of dust and bits of broken plaster began raining down around her as a huge spider-web of cracks splintered the ceiling.

Then . . . without a word, or a single backward glance . . . Ralph raised one gargantuan arm and punched out the front wall of the room in a single swing.

Windows shattered, boards splintered, bricks crumbled and two thirds of the ceiling collapsed entirely. Mike screamed and scrambled back away from the falling wreckage, bumping into Artemisio's steamer trunk behind her. A cold wind suddenly whipped her hair and clothes, and a pounding rain was falling all around her, wetting her to the skin within seconds. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking out through the gray, thundering downpour at the distant shapes of the mountains.

What had seconds before been the third story of her house was now one and a half walls just barely managing to hold up the remaining fraction of roof, and the floor around her was now covered with mountainous heaps of rubble and debris, much of which had just barely missed crushing her. But as shocking and abrupt as it was to see an entire floor of her home demolished in the blink of an eye, Mike was not looking at the twisted wreckage surrounding her.

There, still looming in front of her with his arms hanging calmly at his sides, the heavy rain now pounding down on his head and shoulders, flattening his hair and soaking the tattered remains of his shirt, was Ralph . . . silhouetted against the cold gray sky, as still and silent as a statue . . . and standing at least fifteen feet tall.

Her wet hair falling over her eyes in strings and her shirt drenched and clinging to her, Mike just looked at the dark, impossibly enormous shape of his turned back, too terrified and shell-shocked to do anything but sit and stare, her mouth hovering speechlessly.

Then . . . so calmly and slowly that it made her blood run cold . . . Ralph turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. She covered her open mouth with her hand.

An almost blinding, piercing blue light was glowing in his eyes, drowning out any trace of irises or pupils . . . but it wasn't the light that frightened her the most. It was the absolute emptiness of his expression. His face was simply blank . . . utterly, immutably, _blank_ . . . as if he not only possessed no emotion, but no longer possessed even the capacity to register emotion. Slowly . . . so horribly, horribly slowly . . . he turned around to face her, the floorboards creaking as if they might collapse any second . . . and for one fleeting, final moment, they just stared at each other.

Mike struggled as hard as she could against the fear and grief, and at last she was able to muster up the faintest whisper of a voice.

"Ralph . . . _Ralph . . . _are you . . . can you - ?"

Before she could finish the question, he reared back one unspeakably gargantuan fist, and punched the floor in front of her.

_KKKRRRSSSHKKAAAM!_

Mike screamed. The floor burst apart into fragments, and she shielded her face with her arms a split-second too late as splinters of wood and brick flew up into her face. The entire house gave a moaning shudder as a huge, ugly crack traveled down its northern and southern walls, and Mike felt herself sliding slowly forward as the rest of the floor began to give out beneath her.

There was a sudden lurch, followed several seconds later by a heavy, hulking _THUD _that shook the world like an earthquake. Ralph had leapt off of the house and landed on the grass below . . . and the last Mike saw of him before she went tumbling down toward the disintegrating remains of her studio below was one final glimpse of his blazing, emotionless blue eyes . . . then, the glow vanished over the edge of the building, and he was gone.


	41. Chapter 40: Viruses Do Not Stop

**A/N: **Oh man, you guys. We're coming into the home stretch, now.

I apologize for the relative shortness of this chapter, but I think I'm going to try and divide the rest of the story into somewhat quicker chapters updated a little more frequently. The OCD in me reeeaaaallly wants to wrap this thing up in a nice round 45 chapters, so that's the remaining life expectancy at this point. We'll see what happens.

Illustration for this chapter is posted on my dA!

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted characters or concepts mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 40: Viruses Do Not Stop_

"Calhoun!? _Felix!? _What's wrong with you guys? Come on, _get up!" _Vanellope pleaded, yanking with all her might on Calhoun's arm, but only succeeding in making the sergeant roll onto her other side with a fresh cringe of pain. Felix had managed to push himself onto his hands and knees, but he was still grimacing and clutching the place on his chest where the glowing blue snake had burst out only moments earlier.

Growing more panicked by the second, Vanellope bit her lip and tossed her head around, as if half-hoping she would look up and see Ralph lumbering over from Mike's house to help her . . . but her dim view of the Masterwork lawn through the tunnel opening was empty and desolate, the grass drenched with pounding rain and a thin mist beginning to settle over the ground. She shivered with a sudden gust of cold air, and her heart began to pound as she turned back and tried desperately again to revive the Fix-Its.

"Please, _please _try to get up!" she cried, jumping over to Felix and draping one of his arms over her shoulders, groaning and struggling to heave him up off of his knees. "We have to go make sure Ralph and Mike are okay!"

Felix moaned groggily as he allowed himself to be helped up, rising shakily to his feet on the tunnel floor and leaning heavily on Vanellope for another moment. When he spoke, his voice was pale and exhausted.

"What . . . what in the world just _happened to us?"_

"I don't know . . . " Calhoun replied suddenly in a hoarse croak, wincing as she rolled onto her back and slowly sat up. " . . . but _whatever_ it was . . . it feels like I just took a plasma blast to the solar plexus."

"Well you've gotta _shake it off,_ guys! We don't have time for this! The virus might already be - "

KKKKRRRUUAAASH!

The three of them jumped, then froze stock still as the rainy atmosphere was abruptly rent by a veritable explosion of snapping and cracking and crumbling, coming from somewhere nearby in the game and resonating for a few seconds within the enclosed mouth of the tunnel where they were crouched.

They each remained frozen in place for another instant, then turned and exchanged matching expressions of shock and fear. Vanellope felt all the color drain from her face, her throbbing heart creeping deeper into her chest with a paroxysm of trepidation. Without waiting for the Fix-Its to get up, she forced herself to turn around and inch toward the opening of the tunnel, dreading what she might find when she looked out.

Almost trembling, Vanellope slowly peered out around the edge of the archway, turned instinctively toward the coast, and saw . . . . . nothing. The rain was pouring down in sheets, thickening the air to a gray translucence and blurring the edges of the Masterwork landscape, reducing the forest and mountains and ocean to nothing but shapeless swaths of dark color. Frowning, Vanellope squinted her eyes sharply and searched the dim shoreline once more for anything out of the ordinary . . . and then, so suddenly that it actually made her yelp out loud in alarm, she spotted it.

"What?" Felix asked, jerking his head anxiously up toward Vanellope as he was helping his wife rise to her feet. "What do you see!?"

Vanellope's mouth hung open silently for a moment, her narrow eyes fixed incredulously on the cloud of vague, dark coloring that was hanging suspended up in the air above the place where Mike's house would normally appear once one was close enough to it.

"I . . . I'm not sure," she muttered truthfully, sticking her head further out of the tunnel until the rain was spattering down her forehead. She peered up at the strange, indistinct shape floating in the air for another moment until suddenly, her brain registered a familiar bulk of orange and burgundy and her face lit up with joyful relief.

"It's Ralph! I see him!" she cried jubilantly back at the Fix-It's, who staggered closer toward the opening to look out themselves. "He's still okay! He's - "

_KKKRRRSSSHKKAAAM!_

Again, Vanellope's voice was suddenly cut off by a violent, seismic report of destruction similar to the first . . . only this time, there was no mystery as to from whence it had originated.

Vanellope stopped dead in mid-sentence, her eyes widening and the burst of hopeful elation at seeing Ralph again vanishing as quickly as it had appeared . . . and in it's wake, leaving behind a vacuum that seemed to empty out the inside of her chest like a black hole. In one sudden, inexplicable motion, she had seen the blurry outline of Ralph's fist raise high above his head, then come crashing down on what she abruptly realized must have been the third-story floor of Mike's house, only made visible by Ralph's similarly devastating blow to its outer wall seconds earlier.

Her theory was confirmed the next instant when a thick, shuddering crack appeared in the naked air beneath the floating third-floor, spreading from the impact of Ralph's fist and traveling down the unseen sides of the building. Bit by bit, more and more sections of brick became visible as they crumbled and gave way, until all of a sudden there was an entire, gradually collapsing house sitting on the stormy shoreline.

What came next seemed to happen in slow motion . . . and it wasn't until it was already over that the reality of what she had seen truly sank into Vanellope's mind and left her reeling with near indescribable confusion and horror.

She, Calhoun and Felix were huddled together at the opening of the tunnel, watching in baffled silence as the yellow-brick building was slowly crumbling in front of them . . . when all of a sudden, the rain-blurred orange and burgundy figure of their friend had turned around and leapt clear off of the failing structure, sailing soundlessly through the air for few seconds and then landing on the grass with a deafening impact so powerful that the tremors it sent rippling through the ground nearly buckled Vanellope's knees, making her tighten her hold on the stone archway.

Even then, the rain was still too thick and the light too dim for her to clearly make out Ralph's shape across the lawn. It wasn't until he had straightened up and begun walking calmly toward them - with footfalls so heavy, Vanellope could practically feel them vibrating in her chest - that they got their first real look at him, and realized altogether, in one horrible instant, why it was that he seemed to be stomping so weightily and lumbering so slowly.

Vanellope's heart stopped beating and her entire body went cold. A hollow pit of terror opened up in her stomach so suddenly she almost felt as if she were about to be sick. Felix's hand clamped down on her shoulder as if to pull her protectively back into the tunnel, but his feet were rooted in place as immovably as hers. Calhoun's hand had shot instinctively to the laser pistol holstered at her hip, but was now just hovering helplessly over the weapon, as frozen in the grip of horror as the rest of her.

"R . . . . _Ralph?" _Vanellope whispered.

She suddenly found herself praying fervently, hoping against all hope, that they were wrong, they'd made a terrible mistake . . . . that the thing coming toward them through the rain _wasn't _Ralph, couldn't _possibly _be him . . . . but, as her trembling eyes slowly focused in on the familiar plaid pattern of his tattered shirt, the unmistakable spike of his rain-drenched hair, the single strap of his overalls that was now stretched so tight it dug into the meat of his enormous, bulging shoulder . . . . the closer he drew to them, the more agonizingly clear it became.

_That thing . . . that gigantic, towering monster lumbering slowly toward them, with the eerie blue light glowing out of his dead, expressionless eyes . . . ._

_. . . . that thing, was her best friend._

Tears welled up instantly in her eyes, and before she could stop herself, Vanellope tore away from Felix's grasp and went running out into the downpour.

"RALPH!"

_"Vanellope, NO!" _Felix and Calhoun shouted frantically after her . . . but she barely heard them. She was already drenched through, the raindrops mingling indistinguishably with the tears running down her face as she stumbled to a halt twenty feet in front of Ralph and looked up at him, her chest heaving and her voice choked with rising sobs.

"RALPH, IT'S _ME! _IT'S VANELLOPE!" she screamed, holding her arms out to him as he continued to walk slowly toward her, a terrifying sense of unconscious determination in his indifferent stride. He didn't so much as bat an eye in her direction.

"Vanellope, come _back!" _Felix pleaded, his voice sounding weak and far away. "That's not _Ralph _anymore!"

Ignoring him, Vanellope took a step further and raised her arms higher over her head, waving them desperately in attempt to make him look down at her.

"YOU'RE MY _FRIEND, _RALPH!" she cried, holding her ground as his thundering footfalls came closer and closer with no sign of stopping, or even slowing down; "YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND! LET ME _HELP YOU!"_

_"Vanellope, LOOK OUT!"_

All at once, Ralph was no longer moving towards her . . . he was on _top _of her, his gargantuan height towering over her like a living mountainside . . . his enormous foot was coming down straight above her, his glowing eyes still trained coldly straight ahead of him and not even glancing down as she screamed and covered her head with her arms . . .

_"Oooff!"_

For a split second, she heard small footsteps racing and splashing toward her across the grass . . . then, gloved hands collided with her shoulders at top speed and she was tumbling over the ground, somersaulting head over heels along with Felix until they finally rolled to a stop, flopping breathlessly on their backs in the muddy grass.

"Let me up! Let me _up!" _Vanellope wailed, struggling to wrench herself out of the superintendent's grasp . . . but he kept her back pinned protectively against him, no matter how she thrashed. "We have to help him! _Let me go!"_

"There's nothing you can do for him now, Vanellope!" Felix shouted, keeping her locked in place until she finally gave up with a helpless sob and turned around to bury her face in his chest. She couldn't see his expression, but from the trembling tone of his voice she could sense that he was just as shocked and grieved over the transformation of their friend as she was. "There's . . . there's nothing _any _of us can do for him right now . . . . that isn't _him, _Vanellope, that's not our Ralph in there . . . that's _got _to be the vi . . . . _TAMMY!"_

Vanellope jumped in alarm and whipped her head around as Felix's voice abruptly rose to a frantic scream, and she looked back just in time to see Ralph raising his enormous fist high above the entrance to the tunnel on the right. The opening was dark and empty . . . Calhoun was nowhere to be seen.

"TAMORA! _NO!"_

KKKRRRAAUUNCH.

With one devastating downward blow, Ralph's fist crumbled the stone archway of the tunnel into pieces . . . but in the instant before the impact, Vanellope's ears had picked up the faint roar of jets, and like a bullet blasting from the barrel of a gun, Calhoun had come rocketing out of the archway just split seconds before it collapsed in a heap of rubble. Felix let out a ragged cry of relief, and Vanellope suddenly noticed that in his instant of panic he had tightened his arms around her until she could scarcely breathe. He loosened his hold on her, and they both jumped to their feet as Calhoun steered the sputtering cruiser towards them and lowered it down the grass, holding herself up with her hands on both knees and her chest heaving for breath.

"Had to . . . had to go back for it," she wheezed, looking up at them through her rain-plastered bangs. "Only way . . . only way we'll be able to - "

"LOOK!" Vanellope interrupted her sharply, jabbing her arm past Calhoun toward the still-crumbling brick house on the shoreline. The Fix-Its turned to look where she was pointing, and they both gasped in unison.

The entire front wall of the house had now fallen down and lay heaped in a pile of wreckage at the foot of the building, revealing a sliced-away view of the interior . . . and there, dangling high above the jagged debris of the two floors below her and desperately clinging to the edge of the collapsing third-story floor with both hands . . .

_"Mike!" _Calhoun roared . . . and before either of them could say another word, she had stomped down on the accelerator and went blasting in the direction of the house, the engines of the damaged cruiser struggling and sputtering on their last legs even as she went. Felix and Vanellope stared after her for another instant in paralyzed dread . . . when suddenly, another deafening impact of shattering stones jerked their attention back to the twin tunnels.

With another seismic punch, Ralph had reduced the entrance of the tunnel on the left to ruins, just as he had the one on the right. The boulders crumbled down in fragments and entirely blocked off the dark opening . . . and it was then, just as Vanellope was feeling certain that she could never be more confused or shocked or terrified than she was at that instant . . . something happened which proved her wrong.

There, in front of their very eyes, the monstrously enlarged figure of their friend straightened up to his full height in front of the destroyed tunnel . . . . and _glitched._

Ralph's enormous body rippled into fragments of flashing, turquoise binary, consolidated into a blipping singularity, then glitched straight through the wall of solid boulders and disappeared down the tunnel on the left.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As the ragged piece of floor from which she was dangling helplessly continued to tilt further and further towards the edge of collapse, Mike had to consciously force herself to keep breathing. She swallowed thickly and darted her head down to look at the rubble below, the jagged ends of broken boards and glass and concrete that awaited her at the bottom of the two-story drop.

There was no time to think, no time to act . . . one second, she was just barely clinging to wet ends of the floorboards with her trembling fingers, her heart pounding like a drum . . . and the next second, her grip had finally given out, and she was plummeting like a stone toward the ruins beneath her.

Mike opened her mouth to scream . . . but before she could even fill her lungs with breath, she suddenly felt herself colliding bluntly with something solid and fast-moving, something that seemed to swoop in out of nowhere with a dying mechanical roar and snatch her straight out of the air as she fell.

The next thing she knew, she was being held up by a pair of powerful, armor-clad arms, and she was flying rapidly away from her house, just as the last remaining pillars of the structure finally gave way and the entire building collapsed with a deafening tremor and billowing cloud of plaster dust that was almost instantly snuffed out in the downpour.

Blinking the rain out of her eyes, Mike looked breathlessly up into the face of her rescuer and was utterly shocked to see none other than Fix-It Felix's wife, gritting her teeth with effort and peering determinedly forward through the drenched blonde curtain of her hair as they flew.

"C . . . C-Calhoun!" she stammered in disbelief, clumsily bracing her hands on the taller woman's shoulders and trying to lower her feet down to the floor of the cruiser. "Calhoun, what in the . . . how did you - !?"

_"Stop moving!" _Calhoun cut her off with a fierce snarl . . . but even as she did, it was obvious that her strength was failing her fast, and the hoverboard began to swerve and dip haphazardly as her control over it began to slip. They suddenly plummeted into a rapid dive toward the ground, and Mike whipped her head around in time to see the startled, bugged eyes of Felix and Vanellope just before the cruiser thrust back upward and then spun out, scarcely avoiding crashing into the grass but bucking she and Calhoun off of it in the process.

Mike winced at the shuddering impact as she and Calhoun bounced twice and then landed in a jumble of limbs on the grass. Felix and Vanellope were immediately by their side, gingerly helping them to disentangle from one another.

Everything was happening so fast . . . . _one minute, Ralph was kissing her and drawing the virus out of her body . . . the next, it had changed him into a horrific, gigantic incarnation of himself before her very eyes, and destroyed everything around her . . . then, she'd been hanging on for dear life to the shattered remnant of her home . . . then falling from it _. . . and now, her friends had just materialized out of thin air and saved her life, and Ralph was nowhere to be seen.

If it weren't for the cold rain pounding on her skin and the very real touch of Vanellope's hands as she helped her sit up, Mike would have been tempted to give in to the desire to believe that it was all just some kind of continuous nightmare, and that she might wake up from it at any moment.

"What . . . what are you three doing here!?" was all she could think to say as she looked around at their pale, frightened faces.

While Felix was attending anxiously to his wife, Vanellope ignored this question and replied with a shrill, panicked one of her own.

"What _happened!?_ What happened to _RALPH!?"_

Mike blinked, the horror of the transformation she had witnessed flooding back to her in an instant and choking her voice so thickly she could hardly speak.

"He . . . h-he . . . he s-saved me," she whispered, unable to tear her gaze away from the little girl's wide, desperate eyes, which were flashing with a gleam of unshed tears. "The . . . the v-virus was . . . it was about to destroy me, and he . . . Ralph . . . he t-took it away from me."

"Took it away from you? What do you mean, he _took it away from you!?"_

"I . . . I don't know, he just . . . _took it. _He drew it out of me, so that . . . so that it would destroy _him, _instead of me . . . and . . . it t-turned him into that . . . _that . . . _oh, I'm sorry . . . I'm _so sorry, _Vanellope. This is exactly why I quarantined myself in _here . . . _to stop it from hurting anyone else!"

"We know . . . we saw the letter, Mike," Calhoun spoke up suddenly in a weak, gritting voice that made them all glance up at her in alarm. " . . . and we found something that you _missed. _The virus has entered its final stage. It wasn't going to destroy you . . . not _yet, _anyway. First, it was going to use the information it stole to mutate you into a kill program that would obliterate everything it could get its hands on . . . and t_hat's _what happened to Ralph. He isn't _himself . . ._ he isn't _Ralph _anymore. He's just a vehicle now, a fifteen-foot human meat-puppet the virus is going to use to destroy the arcade . . . unless we _stop it."_

"The arcade? Who cares about the _arcade?" _Vanellope almost screamed. "What about _Ralph!? _How are we going to get him back to normal?!"

"You've got to calm _down, _pipsqueak. This is no time for us to lose our heads. The only way to help him now is to draw the virus back out of him somehow . . . draw it out, or _delete _it from his programming."

"But . . . but _how_?" Felix asked hopelessly, supporting Calhoun's shoulders as she sat up further. "The message said that the virus has no antidote!"

"I don't _know _how, honey . . . " she ground out through clenched teeth and winced as she pressed a hand over her abdomen, " . . . but we don't have a _choice. _If we don't find a way to stop that thing, it's only a matter of time before every living thing in this arcade is _dead . . . _in_cluding _Ralph."

There was a moment of a horrible, gut-rending silence.

Calhoun tried to stand up, then grimaced again, and Felix eased her back down to the grass with a thoughtful frown.

"Well . . . at any rate . . . let me fix you up first, Tamora," he said gravely, removing the hammer from his belt. "Whatever that blue light was, it seems to have taken a harder toll on you than it did on me."

Mike's ears perked up, and a shuddering chill abruptly gripped her insides.

"B . . . blue light?" she repeated, anxiously leaning closer toward the Fix-Its. "What blue light?"

"Just before we made it out of the Internet tunnel . . . " Felix explained as he briefly inspected his wife's torso, " . . . there was this . . . this . . . I don't know _how _to explain it . . . they were like streaks of blinding blue light, but they were . . . _alive, _somehow. They came out of our bodies, then disappeared somewhere ahead of us, and then - "

_Tlink._

Felix stopped dead in mid-sentence, his hammer hovering frozen over the spot on Calhoun's midsection he had just gently tapped. He froze blankly for an instant . . . then, a pale, disbelieving look of dread spread slowly over his face. The next second, it appeared on his wife's face, and then Vanellope's, as if they had each suddenly realized the same thing he had. Mike looked anxiously back and forth between them, a sick feeling already forming in the pit of her stomach.

"What? What is it!?"

His lips parted silently and his eyes narrowing, Felix shook his head in denial and tapped the same place a second time . . . and a second time, instead of the golden glow and normal _bid-a-ling _that she remembered accompanying the work of his hammer when he had healed her injuries at the Street Fighter party, there was nothing but a dead, hollow-sounding,

_Tlink._

Felix looked up at his wife, and she slowly shook her head at him.

"No," she whispered emptily. "It's . . . it's not working, Felix."

"That . . . that can't be!" he sputtered frantically, tapping his hammer over and over on Calhoun's armored stomach. "That just can't _be! _It's _never _not worked before! What . . . how . . . !?"

Suddenly, Calhoun's eyes widened and she sat up further.

"' . . . _the primary function of the Love Bug virus . . .'" _she muttered slowly under her breath, staring straight ahead of her as if reading words from an invisible page. "' . . . _is_ _to steal, then __**corrupt **__information . . . it spreads, making copies of key information in all the programs it infects . . . then appropriates the stolen data back to the host and uses it to transmute itself into a __**kill program**__!' _That's why your hammer isn't working, that's why I feel so _weak!_ The virus didn't just take copies of our code back to the host . . . it _corrupted _the original data so that we would be left helpless to stop it!"

_"The blue lights," _Mike whispered breathlessly, and the three of them turned to look at her. "Just before the virus began to take over my body . . . there were _blue lights, _dozens and dozens of them . . . th-they came flying in from nowhere, then phased straight into me . . . " Mike turned her eyes toward Vanellope, " . . . _just like in the Sugar Rush code room."_

"Just like in the . . . _what!?" _

"I . . . I didn't think it was the right time to tell you then, but . . . when I went into the Sugar Rush code room the day you were malfunctioning, Vanellope, there was a . . . a _thing . . . _like a snake, or a leech, made of blue light, latched onto your code box. I pulled it off, and it . . . it went _inside of me."_

Vanellope froze, her eyes widening, then looked suddenly at Felix.

"That's why they only came out of _you _guys, and not me!" she cried. "Because mine was already _gone . . . _back to the host! And that's . . . that's why . . . "

She trailed off suddenly, a pale glimmer of fear and dawning realization creeping over her. An instant later, it stole over Felix as well, and he uttered in a low whisper . . .

"That's why Ralph had your _glitching ability . . . _and if he has _that, _then that means . . . that means he also has _my_ powers, and Tamora's . . . he . . . he has the stolen abilities of _every character that was infected with the virus."_

There was a horrible, stilted moment of the deadest silence Michelangela had ever heard . . . . and it was only then, as the four of them were hanging their heads in the reeling disbelief and utter, devastating hopelessness of the situation, that she suddenly realized the rain had stopped.

"There's . . . there's just one thing I don't understand," Calhoun muttered hoarsely after a long moment. "If the virus is just out to destroy everything it can touch . . . then why didn't Ralph come after _us?_ We were _there, _we were right in front of him . . . and in our condition, we wouldn't have lasted five _seconds _against that behemoth! So why didn't he _attack us?"_

While Calhoun was talking, Mike had been slowly trolling her eyes across the gray, misty landscape of her game, which was now clearly visible for the first time since the rain had begun . . . and when her gaze finally fell upon the tremendous heap of wreckage that had recently been her home, she stopped cold. Her mouth went dry, and without realizing it, her whole body began to tremble.

"M-maybe . . . maybe because he didn't need to," she whispered hollowly. _"Look."_

The others turned their heads in the direction that she was pointing, and instantly the already crushing silence around them deepened somehow . . . as if an invisible, smothering layer of fear had been draped over them.

On every jagged edge of wood and brick and concrete and plaster that lay piled on the Masterwork shoreline, a flicker of light had suddenly appeared . . . a familiar, frightening, electric blue glow that licked and spread over the surface of the rubble like flames licking across a ball of paper. Piercing beams of light abruptly shot straight out from the ruins, cutting like knives through the heavy gray atmosphere . . . . and then, all at once, in the center of the glowing debris, there appeared . . . . a _darkness._

It was small at first, a just barely noticeable hole of absolute blackness no more than a foot wide . . . but as they watched, horror-stricken, they realized that the hole was slowly growing, spreading larger and larger by the second until all at once it had consumed the entirety of the collapsed house. In complete stillness and soundlessness, the place where Mike's home had once stood was now nothing but a dark void gaping in the very fabric of the game's reality . . . . and the line of glowing blue light had already spread to the grass, and was creeping slowly toward them.

For a moment, the four of them just sat motionlessly on the lawn, and stared.

Then, the darkness began to swallow up the edge of the coastline . . . and in a frantic, ragged scream, Calhoun abruptly found her voice.

_"EVERYONE OUTTA THE GAME! __**NOW**__!"_

She didn't have to say it twice.

In the blink of an eye, Calhoun had snatched her banged-up cruiser and slung it over one shoulder, and Felix and Mike worked together to heave her shakily up onto her feet. Once standing, she was able to run under her own power, but it was still painfully obvious that the virus had done away with nearly all of her programmed strength and stamina, and that no amount of rest was going to restore it. The three of them sprinted as fast as they could toward the tunnel on the left . . . Vanellope was already yards ahead of them, and reached it nearly ten seconds before they did.

"It's blocked off! We _can't get out!"_ she shrieked as they drew up breathlessly behind her. She was on her knees, struggling with all her might to heave away one of the large rocks at the bottom of the collapsed arch that was barring their exit from the game . . . when suddenly, Felix let out a horrified yelp and wrenched her away.

"Get back, Vanellope! Don't _touch it!"_

As they stood there, the same outlines of creeping blue light that had licked over the ruins of the house had appeared on the contours of the boulders obstructing both tunnels.

"Alright, everybody STAND BACK!" Calhoun roared, breathing heavily as she pulled a small round object from a pocket on her belt.

Too frightened and desperate to disobey or even question her, Mike and the others hastily retreated ten paces from the blocked-off tunnels. Calhoun tapped the nondescript little sphere once with her thumb, and it abruptly gave an electronic _bleep _and began blinking with a tiny green light. She tossed the blipping object into the pile of rubble, then half-ran, half-staggered back towards the others, pulling her cruiser off her shoulder and tossing it out in front of them as she did.

_BBRREEOOOOOM!_

Mike let out a short, startled scream as a brilliant green explosion blew apart the remains of the ruined archway, showering them with a hail of hot pebbles that sizzled in the wet grass. The blast hadn't been enough to clear the mouth of the tunnel completely, but it had opened up a smoking hole just large enough for them to fit through.

"EVERYBODY ON!" Calhoun barked her next order, staggering onto the cruiser platform and motioning sharply for the others to follow. The second all four of them were crowded precariously onto the craft, each of them simultaneously holding onto Calhoun for balance and helping her to stand on her slightly trembling legs, she jammed her heel down on the accelerator.

The engines roared to life . . . sputtered twice . . . then died.

"No . . . _no . . . _come on, _come on_!" Calhoun snarled savagely, stomping on the pad again and again and producing a series of struggling whines and brief, useless bursts of flame from the jets. "COME _ON!"_

"It's getting CLOSER!" Vanellope shouted frantically, and they turned to look back at the Masterwork landscape. Mike felt her heartbeat slow, then go completely numb and drop into her stomach like a rock when she saw that the beach and the ocean were already gone . . . vanished, swallowed up in the horrifying black nothingness that was creeping closer and closer toward them across the grass, led by the edge of blue light that flickered and writhed like a coil of lightning.

A small, second patch of the darkness suddenly appeared in the glowing rubble of the tunnel on the right, just a few feet away from them.

"COME ON, you stupid _son of a . . . . YES!" _Calhoun slammed her heel down on the accelerator so hard that Mike thought she might snap the tail end of the board clean off, but the next instant, there was a churning roar and a sharp whiff of burning ozone, and at last the blue flames of the jets exploded to life. The cruiser rose swiftly into the air and shot toward the tunnel on the left.

_"Duck!" _Felix cried, and everyone did . . . they crouched down in unison just in time for them to fly through the steadily crumbling opening a split second before it collapsed once more behind them.

For only a few seconds, they were submerged in total darkness as they flew blindly down the tunnel . . . but the next moment, a menacing blue glow suddenly lit up behind them, and as Mike craned her neck to look back, her eyes widened and her hands tightened fearfully around Calhoun's waist.

"Faster! _Go faster!"_

The tunnel was crumbling to pieces behind them as they went. Cracks of blue light were snaking along the darkness of the walls and ceiling and floor, following almost as quickly as they were flying . . . and then, with an ear-splitting din of snapping and crashing and electronic screeching, the tunnel was coming to pieces and collapsing down so close behind them that flecks of the debris were bouncing off their backs.

Calhoun let out a grimacing snarl of determination and spurred the cruiser on, pushing them further and further without looking back, until finally the light at the end of the tunnel appeared, and they could see the golden glow of Game Central Station rapidly approaching.

"Al . . . most . . . _there . . .!" _Calhoun grit through her teeth as the crumbling tunnel drew louder and louder, closer and closer behind them.

At the last second, Mike squeezed her eyes shut.

_KKKRRUUUNNCH._

_SHHHHTTTTSSHREEEE!_

There was a deafening crash of stone and metal collapsing in on itself, a sharp blast of air propelling them from behind, and then the ear-splitting shriek and staggering vibration underfoot as the cruiser dropped down and skidded along the floor, the jets finally spent.

The hoverboard screeched across the polished linoleum for thirty feet and then finally ground to a halt at the end of the Masterwork plug gate, throwing its four passengers another ten feet, all of them landing together in a jumbled, moaning heap just past the golden archway.

Her arms and legs aching and her heart throbbing in her mouth, Mike sat up and woozily opened her eyes. Straight ahead, back down the corridor and past the anteroom of her game . . . _or rather, what __**used **__to be her game . . . _she could see the end of the Masterwork tunnel, now completely caved in and blocked off by a mound of rubble that spilled down the steps of the platform leading up to it.

_Masterwork . . . her game, her __**home**__, the only home she'd ever known . . . ._

_. . . it was gone._

_Just like that . . . it was completely gone._

But before she had even half a moment to register the full reality of what had just happened, the atmosphere of Game Central Station was suddenly rent with the blaring, echoing trill of automated gunfire.

Mike whirled around in alarm . . . and for a few awful, paralyzed seconds, she, Calhoun, Felix and Vanellope remained sprawled in their stunned positions on the smooth floor of the transit, staring in blank horror at a sight which they had each inwardly known they were going to see as soon as they entered the station, but had been neither able nor willing to admit out loud to themselves or to each other.


	42. Chapter 41: You're Bad

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 41: You're Bad . . . ._

For a few awful, paralyzed seconds, Mike and the others remained sprawled in their stunned positions on the smooth floor of the transit, staring in blank horror at a sight which they had each inwardly known they were going to see as soon as they entered Game Central Station . . . but had been neither able, nor willing to admit out loud to themselves or to each other.

There, towering in the middle of room not fifty yards away from them and looking somehow even larger and more frightening in the bright, warm surroundings of the station than he had in the stormy atmosphere of Masterwork, was Ralph - and scattered in a loose formation around him, looking like little more than armored children in comparison, were Kohut and his squad of five other soldiers, their weapons trained squarely up at him as they ran and fired at him in strategic intervals to keep him trapped within their perimeter. The six surge protectors who'd been guarding the Masterwork gate were huddled for cover behind the central information kiosk and looking on with bewildered, terrified faces.

Kohut was frantically barking orders to the others, his voice all but drowned out in the automated volleys of green plasma exploding from the mouths of their guns and echoing off the cavernous walls of the station, filling the huge room with a constant din of chaotic noise . . . but somehow, in spite of the absurd size and proximity of their target, none of them seemed able to land even a single shot, no matter how many times they fired.

Ralph, whose face was still a blank, expressionless mask of indifference, was looking down at the soldiers as if they presented no more of a threat than a pack of mice scrambling around him . . . and whenever one of them fired at him, he simply dodged out of the way of the shot with alarming speed and agility for his size, then swung a retaliating blow toward his attacker . . . but from the eerily calm, almost half-hearted speed of his punches - all of which ended up missing the soldiers and hitting the floor instead, with a shuddering impact that cracked the linoleum - it was obvious that he wasn't really trying to hit them, so much as simply escape from within their midst. If Mike hadn't known that his blank countenance was a product of the virus, she would have thought that he almost looked as if he were thoroughly bored with the entire exchange.

For almost five seconds, the four of them just lay motionlessly on the floor, watching the scene unfold with transfixed expressions of horror . . . then, without warning, the first one of them to find her voice and her feet again was Vanellope.

"STOP IT!" she screamed suddenly, jumping up and taking off at a headlong sprint straight toward the skirmish. "STOP _SHOOTING AT HIM!"_

_"Vanellope!" _Mike cried out reflexively, and she and the Fix-Its immediately scrambled to their feet and ran after her. They just barely managed to catch up with her before she had thrown herself right into the middle of the fray . . . Calhoun snatched her up by the hood of her sweatshirt and yanked her back, the four of them darting aside to duck behind the information kiosk with the surge protectors just as a blaring plasma blast ricocheted off the wall and scorched the floor where she'd been standing.

"Tell them to STOP!" Vanellope shouted furiously at Calhoun even as she struggled to break away from the sergeant's severely weakened, but still serious grip. "They're going to _kill him!"_

"Shhhh! Keep _quiet! _We can't let him know we escaped from Masterwork!" Calhoun hissed instinctively as the four of them, ignoring the terrified cries and frantic inquiries of the group of SPs huddled beside them, cautiously inched over to peer around the edge of the kiosk.

"No . . . _no, _they're not going to kill him . . . they can't even lay a hand on him!" Felix murmured in a pale tone of bewildered amazement. "They're at point-blank range, and they haven't managed a single shot!"

Calhoun squinted and shook her head slowly in disbelief.

"I don't _get _it . . . it's like Ralph's not even _trying _to fight them! Why isn't he - ?"

But at that very instant, one of the soldiers standing not fifteen feet away from them suddenly broke formation, bolted straight up under Ralph's face with his shoulder cannon reared back, and with a savage, indignant roar, fired directly up at him from such a close range that he was finally unable to duck out of the way in time.

_TTTSSZZZZEEEEEOOOOOOOM!_

"NO! _N_ - " Vanellope started to scream, but Calhoun clamped a gloved hand over her mouth and cut her off.

The blast of plasma-fire exploded against Ralph's chest with a blinding green flash, making him stagger backwards and reel around in a half-circle, catching himself on the floor with his hands before he fell and sending a short tremor vibrating through the floor beneath them. Mike cringed and forced herself to look away, biting her bottom lip and having to struggle viciously against the urge to run out into the fight herself.

_It won't do any good, _she repeated over and over in her mind, squeezing her eyes shut and ordering herself to believe it. _That's not Ralph . . . you __**can't do**__ anything for him right now, the only way to help is to get rid of the virus . . . that's not Ralph, that's __**not Ralph**__ . . . ._

"He's down! _Cease fire!"_ Kohut shouted, signaling sharply to his men. They stopped shooting, but kept their weapons raised and trained shakily toward the rise of the mammoth back turned to them.

Vanellope was practically in hysterics, thrashing and struggling so fiercely that it was all Calhoun could do to maintain her hold on her.

"He's HURT! He's _HURT! _We have to _help him!" _she wailed furiously, unshed tears of rage budding in the corners of her eyes. "Let me _go, _we have to - !"

But suddenly, her cries of protest silenced and her eyes went wide as Ralph abruptly pushed himself back to his feet and spun around to face the soldiers again. There was a collective gasp of revulsion from the unit, and the noses of their guns rose reflexively higher . . . but they were visibly paralyzed under his relentless, glowing stare, their fingers frozen in place over the triggers. Mike covered her mouth with her hand to keep from crying aloud.

Ralph's face and chest were a mass of horrible red and black burn marks from the plasma blast, the front of his shirt all but scorched away and streams of green-tinted smoke rising up from his torso - but his expression was still perfectly, terrifyingly blank. He stood and looked down motionlessly at the handful of stunned soldiers for only half a moment . . . then, without any indication of pain or feeling behind his empty eyes, he raised his fist, and with his knuckles, delivered a single stern, deliberate tap to the front of his chest.

_Bid-a-ling!_

There was a tiny, instantaneous flare of golden light . . . the cruelly cheerful, familiar sound blip of Felix's hammer . . . and just like that, in the blink of an eye, every inch of damage from the blast had vanished completely from his skin and clothes. The soldier who had hit him and was now standing nearer to him than the others let his gun fall to his side, his jaw dropping open. For another split second, everyone in the station - including Mike, Calhoun, Vanellope, Felix, and the surge protectors - just stared in horror-struck silence, rooted helplessly in place.

It wasn't until Ralph's fist was raised high over his head that Calhoun - abruptly snapping out of the trance and forgetting her own orders to stay hidden - dropped Vanellope, leapt out from behind the kiosk, and shouted frantically to her men . . . but by then, she was already too late.

"LOOK OUT! _MOVE__!"_

BBLLAAAMM!

With one crushing, pendulum-like swing of his arm, Ralph's fist slammed into the soldier who'd wounded him and sent him careening into the nearby station wall with such force that it cracked beneath the impact of his body. The soldier's armor buckled in five places, his helmet caved in on one side as if it were made of tin foil, and he collapsed motionlessly on the floor without so much as a cry of pain.

A single instant of dead, deafening silence permeated the station.

Then . . .

"OPEN FIRE!" Kohut roared.

_"NO!" _Calhoun screamed . . . but the soldiers either ignored her, or were still too panicked to have noticed she was there, because the air was immediately rent once more with hails of gunfire . . . only this time, Ralph did more than simply hold back and evade it.

For the first time since his transformation, Mike thought she saw a brief flicker of emotion pass across the glowing, eyeless face . . . a flicker of pure, unthinking _rage . . . _and then, without a single sound of warning, he _charged_, pushing through the volleys of plasma blasts and glancing them off without so much as flinching at the scorch marks they left seared across his shoulders.

_BLLAAMMM!_

_BLLAAMMM!_

Within three seconds of the fresh assault, Ralph had swung two more debilitating blows and crippled another soldier with each, sending them skidding and flailing across the floor with their armor dented and crushed, and their guns all but snapped cleanly in half from the contact of his knuckles. One of them tried to stagger back onto his hands and knees . . . Ralph lumbered emotionlessly over to him, balled both hands into a single fist the size of a small car, and flattened him down again with a blow so terrible, it left a shallow crater broken in the floor around him.

It was all happening so fast that none of them had time to think. The next thing they knew, Calhoun had shaken out of her horrified stupor and gone sprinting out into the middle of the fray. Felix let out a frantic gasp and immediately ran after her, and - not knowing what else to do - Mike and Vanellope followed him.

"Tammy, wait! _Come back!"_

But Calhoun was already screaming at the top of her lungs, charging straight at Kohut and struggling to wrench the gun out of his hands. "HOLD YOUR FIRE! _HOLD YOUR FIRE, _YOU IDIOTS!"

Kohut jerked his head up in alarm, accidentally letting off another round before loosing his grip and letting the gun clatter to the floor.

"S . . . _Sergeant!? _What are you - !?"

_"STOP SHOOTING!" _Calhoun bellowed hoarsely at the remaining two soldiers, who were just barely managing to avoid the hail of Ralph's floor-cracking blows as they darted back and forth around him, their desperate gunshots zipping aimlessly through the air. "Can't you _see!?_ He only attacks if you hit him first! I said _HOLD YOUR __**FIRE**__!_"

But it was too late. Ralph and the two remaining soldiers had gradually worked their way over to the far side of the station, shooting and swinging and running and dodging in a frenzied melee, like two dogs trying to bring down an elephant . . . and before Calhoun could draw their attention away from the desperate combat . . .

_BLLAAAMMMMM!_

In one cutting, sideways swipe of his broad arm, Ralph had knocked both men clean off their feet and sent them flying up twenty feet in the air, arching over everyone's heads and landing with a sickening clatter of armor and weapons so close beside them that Mike and Vanellope shrieked and had to dart aside in unison to keep from being hit. They stared in horror at the crippled soldiers for a split second . . . then, every eye darted back up to Ralph, just in time to see him disappearing through the golden archway of the gate nearest to him on the other side of the station, slamming into the wall once as he went and sending up a violent tremor that cracked the glass of the title screen above it.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

For a few seconds, everything in the station was abruptly silent again . . . a petrified, disbelieving silence that after a moment seemed almost louder than the violent commotion had been.

Then, a sharp stitch of pain from the overexertion suddenly seared in Calhoun's abdomen, and she collapsed down to one knee, wincing through her teeth and gripping her side.

"Tammy!" Felix was immediately beside her. "What were you thinking!? You could have been _killed!"_

"Wha . . . what in the . . . _Sergeant_, what . . . what the BITS JUST _HAPPENED HERE!?" _Kohut sputtered incredulously. "Th-that . . . that thing used to be _Wreck-it Ralph, _didn't it! What _happened _to hi -"

"There's no time to explain, Kohut!" Calhoun jerked her head up, cutting him off so savagely that the question died on his lips. "Call somebody out here to help you get these wounded men back to Hero's Duty, _now! _And once you've got everyone safely inside the game, _no one . . . _I repeat, _NO ONE, _is to come out for _any reason _unless I give the order, understood?"

"But . . . but Sarge_, _what are _you_ going t - "

"UNDER_STOOD?"_

For another instant, her second-in-command looked as if he was going to argue . . . but then, as he caught the iron-cold glint of absolute authority in her eyes, he abruptly snapped his mouth shut and saluted instead.

"Understood, Sergeant!"

Without another word, he flipped on his wrist-communicator and began barking orders into it, while simultaneously running over and kneeling beside each of the fallen soldiers in turn, removing their helmets and checking their vitals. Calhoun winced again and forced herself to look away from them.

_No . . . she couldn't afford to give in to it . . . the pain and remorse and guilt at once again having gotten more of her men hurt, because of __**her**__ slip-ups . . . she just couldn't afford it, not now . . . ._

"Are . . . are your men really going to . . . _to . . . ?" _Mike whispered, staring in horror at the limp, armored bodies strewn across the station.

"No," Calhoun answered coldly, rising to her feet and gently pushing her husband's hands away. "They may not always _act _like it . . . but these busted-up pansies are some of the toughest men I know. They're not going to go down for good _that_ easily . . . "

"What in the name of sweet Sega _WAS THAT THING!?"_

The shrill, panicked voice cried out suddenly from nearby, and Calhoun and the others all looked up sharply to see the group of six surge protectors, staring at them with wide, terrified eyes and hurrying toward them as a unit, as if afraid to separate from one another.

"That _thing, _is my best friend!" Vanellope answered indignantly. "And it isn't his _fault . . . _the virus is controlling him!"

"What!?" the SP at the front of the pack sputtered incredulously, darting his gaze toward Mike. "B-but I thought . . . I thought _you _were supposed to be the virus! How did - !?"

"Just shut up and _listen_, blue boy!" Calhoun cut him off. "It doesn't matter how it happened . . . what matters is that that virus is on a _mission _to destroy everything in this arcade, and it's going to take out anyone who gets in its way unless we - "

"But . . . _wait, _wait just a second!" the surge protector interrupted confusedly. "He . . . _it . . . _the virus didn't attack those soldiers until they hit _it, _first, right? So if it's really out to d . . . d-des_troy _everything, then why didn't it . . . ?"

"Be_cause_ . . . you don't bother cutting off _fingers, _when your plan is to take out the whole _arm!" _Calhoun shot back impatiently. "The virus isn't interested in wasting its energy picking off individual programs . . . it's going straight for the_ games themselves _first, just like it did with Masterwork. It'll make its way through this entire arcade, deleting the games one by one . . . _then, _once there's nowhere left to run, it'll finish off anything that's left standing! You saw the way that thing can fight . . . Ralph's too powerful now, besides which, he can _heal _himself. We're never going to be able to stop him using force_ . . ._ we have to figure out a way to get rid of the _virus itself_."

The SP's mouth hovered open for a few seconds in a helpless frown . . . but then, before he could speak again, Felix suddenly sucked a deep breath through his nose and then let it out, looking up with his face steeled in reluctant determination.

"There's only one thing left for us to try, Tammy . . . the _Fix-It Felix Jr. code room._ We have no choice but to go in and try to delete the virus at its _source_."

There was a brief, acquiescing silence.

"But . . . how?" Mike spoke up in a worried murmur."The message said it was impossible . . . how are you going to delete it from Ralph's code if there's _no anti-virus?"_

"Looks like we're just gonna have to wing it_, _kiddo. It's the only plan we've got," Calhoun muttered, then turned back to the SPs. "What about the firewalls? Have you clowns at least managed to _fix them yet?"_

The leading surge protector blinked, then shook his head in dismay. "N-_no_ . . . the whole system was completely fried during the lockdown. We've t-tried everything, and still haven't been able to get them back online . . . if we had, we would have used one to quarantine _her _inside Masterwork, and then we wouldn't _be _in this mess!"

He pointed one finger accusingly at Mike, and she turned a guilty glance down at her feet. Calhoun blew an unconvinced puff of air between her lips.

"Yeah . . . I _doubt _that, since it's starting to look like the virus is what burned them out in the _first place . . . _but we don't have time to bicker about that now. Everybody listen up . . . if we can't use the firewalls to _trap _Ralph inside one of the games, then we've got to lure him back into the station somehow and keep him here long enough for Felix to get into the code room."

The surge protectors gave a collective gasp of fright.

"H-here!? Why _here!?"_

"_Because, _you spineless bunch of _pencil-pushers . . ._ this is the only place in the entire arcade he won't destroy! The virus _needs_ the station as a go-between . . . that's why it didn't hit my men with the kill code it used to erase Masterwork, so that it wouldn't spread and cut off its access to the other games! If we can manage to keep it in _here_, it won't be able to do any fatal damage - but first_, _we have to draw it back out of whatever game it just . . . _just_ . . ."

Calhoun suddenly trailed off in mid-sentence, her eyes widening and a sudden stab of cold dread piercing her gut. It only took the others a split-second to realize what she had, and their expressions immediately went pale to match her own. In unison, the four of them turned their heads to look across the station at the gate through which Ralph had vanished . . . and then, without another glance between them or a single word of explanation to the baffled surge protectors, they each took off toward it at a frantic sprint.

_Idiot, idiot, IDIOT! _Calhoun cursed herself bitterly as they ran, ignoring the throbbing stitch in her side and straining her wearied muscles as hard as she could. _What was I __**thinking**__!? Standing there __**babbling**__, while Ralph has probably already obliterated half of whatever game he just . . . _

_. . . whatever . . . game . . . he just . . ._

" . . . oh . . . _no," _Felix uttered lowly as the four of them skidded to an abrupt halt outside the damaged gate and looked up.

Maybe the reason they hadn't realized sooner which game it was that Ralph had entered, was because they'd been so stricken by the terror of actually seeing the mutated virus in action . . . or maybe, it was because they'd been so alarmed and distracted with the wounded soldiers and the petrified SPs. Maybe it was even because of the fact that he'd broken the title screen on his way in, and it was now only flickering the letters of the name on and off every few seconds . . . .

. . . or maybe, each one of them had known immediately what game it was he'd gone into, and they'd simply been too afraid to acknowledge it . . . even to themselves.

The instant they looked up and saw the words _Sugar Rush _blinking weakly across the cracked title screen, Vanellope let out a horrified, heart-rending cry of anguish and raced across the threshold without looking back or waiting for the others.

"Vanellope . . . _WAIT!" _Mike screamed, immediately taking off after her.

Calhoun started to run after them as well, when she was abruptly stopped by a glove hand grabbing her wrist and sharply pulling her back. She whirled around to see Felix pinning her with a remorseful, but resolved stare as he tugged her firmly in the opposite direction.

"No_, _Tammy. This could be our only chance . . . you and I have to get to the Fix-It Felix Jr. code room, _immediately!"_

She froze for a split second, sputtering in disbelief.

"But I . . . _they . . . _no, Felix, _you _have to get to the code room! _I _have to protect Mike and Vanello - "

"You _can't, _sweetheart," he cut in bluntly, his brow flattened into an unyielding line. "Whether you'll admit it or not, you're _not strong enough _now to go up against Ralph . . . and I'm _not _going to risk losing you again! Wherever I go, you're staying with _me!"_

Calhoun bristled incredulously, her jaw working soundlessly as she struggled to come up with a counter-argument . . . but after another second, she realized from the stony hardness of his authoritative stare that this was one of those rare instances where her husband had his mind absolutely made up, and nothing she could say or do would convince him otherwise.

Besides . . . as she stood there veritably panting for breath after the short sprint across the station, she was forced to admit - if only to herself, and bitterly - that he was, in fact, right. In her weakened condition, she would scarcely be able to protect _herself, _let alone anyone else.

Calhoun breathed a small sigh of defeat, nodded once, and without another word, obediently followed her husband at a swift jog towards the entrance of Fix-It Felix Jr.

"There's no . . . other way, Tammy!" he panted solemnly over his shoulder, between breaths. "We just . . . have to trust them . . . to take care of _each other."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_THHUUM. _

_THHUUM._

_THHUUM._

Taffyta Muttonfudge - who was kneeling at the side of the track in the Royal Raceway square, along with a handful of other Sugar Rush racers who'd been too nervous to go home after leaving the castle, and needed something to distract them from the ominous cloud of dread that had been looming over them all since President Vanellope's glitching incident - suddenly stopped wiping down the fender of her hot pink lollipop-kart and looked up.

_THHUUM._

_THHUUM._

A fist of unknown dread gripped abruptly around Taffyta's heart, and she turned anxiously to the other racers who were detailing their own karts nearby.

"Hey . . . _hey_, y-you guys . . . do you . . . do you _hear something?"_

Gloyd and Snowanna, the two avatars closest to her, glanced up responsively . . . and the moment they turned their heads in Taffyta's direction, she saw their eyes widen and their faces draw with matching expressions of utter, stupefied horror.

"What?" Taffyta demanded fearfully, whirling around to look over her shoulder in the direction they were staring. "What are you guys . . . . !?"

But the words died instantly on Taffyta's lips as she turned to look down the racetrack toward the Rainbow Bridge and saw what they had seen. A small chorus of startled gasps followed by the clank of candy wrenches and other tools being dropped suddenly to the ground behind her told her that the rest of the racers had looked up and seen it as well.

For half a minute, Taffyta and the others were rooted to the ground in fear, watching open-mouthed as the hulking, monstrous form of . . . _whatever that __**thing **__was_ . . . came lumbering slowly, almost cautiously to the foot of the bridge, the distant sound of its tremulous footfalls growing gradually louder and louder as it continued towards them down the track.

For half a minute, the racers just stood there and stared . . . . then, Candlehead opened her mouth and let out an hysterical, ear-piercing scream that jolted them from their trance, and sent all of them scrambling into their karts in a panicked frenzy. After a brief, terrified melee of stalling engines and squealing tires, the seven candy-karts finally took off in a scattered group and began racing frantically down the track in the opposite direction from the approaching monster.

Her heart pounding and her eyes already clouding up with tears of confusion and fright, Taffyta shot a fearful glance into her rearview mirror and saw the _thing_ - which she suddenly realized, with a flabbergasted jolt, bore a haunting resemblance to that ham-fisted friend of Vanellope's, the one whom she had always secretly made fun of behind the President's back - raising one of its gargantuan fists high into the air . . . _and then_ . . . .

_BBBOOOOOOM!_

Taffyta and the other racers heard the sound of the impact before they felt the tremor . . . it seemed to resonate through the entire game like a flat, featureless thunderclap . . . and then, seconds later, the ground beneath them was trembling and shaking and the pack of karts began to swerve helplessly back and forth. The next instant, there came the most awful, teeth-shuddering splitting noise that Taffyta had ever heard, and when she looked back, she saw that a rapidly spreading network of huge cracks was breaking up the racetrack behind them and gaining fast, following them like the rolling ripple of an earthquake and tossing up broken fragments of the road as it came.

Taffyta screamed and desperately tried to veer her kart off of the track, but it was already too late . . . the sugar-crystal pavement had disintegrated into shards beneath her wheels, and the next thing she knew, she and all the other racers had crashed together in an eight-kart-pileup less than two hundred yards past the finish line. Her head spinning and her whole body trembling like a leaf, Taffyta pulled herself out of the wreckage, stumbled dizzily onto the ruined road, and looked back toward the start of the Raceway.

The monster calmly lifted his fist from the ground, shook off the fragments of debris and sugar dust, and began walking slowly towards them once more.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Vanellope, WAIT! _WAIT!"_

Vanellope heard Mike's voice echoing not far behind her in the Sugar Rush tunnel, but she was already running so hard and was seized so completely by blind, utter panic that she probably wouldn't have been able to slow down even if she wanted to. She tore down the gentle curves and slopes of the dim passage like a bullet, scarcely even breathing by the time the gleaming sunlight of the game finally came into view up ahead.

_"Vanellope!" _Mike called out anxiously to her again, the slap of her bare footsteps on the tunnel floor growing fainter as she fell further behind . . . but Vanellope wasn't thinking about her. She was hardly thinking anything at all . . . it was as if something in her consciousness had finally snapped under the unbearable burden of fear and desperation, and she was running on pure instinct and adrenaline now. She had no idea what she would do once she actually caught up with Ralph - she didn't even know whether she really had any hope of catching up to him at _all. _All she knew was she had to do _something, _anything, even if it was only to keep on running and running until she could run no more.

_Oh, if only that virus hadn't stolen her power! If only, if __**only **__she could still - _

At that split second, before Vanellope's brain could even work out the final word of its single thought, two things happened almost instantaneously.

The first was that she finally reached the end of the Sugar Rush tunnel and came bursting out onto the peak of the Rainbow Bridge . . . and the second was that the very fraction of a second after she had done this, the bright, colorful world spread out in front of her suddenly shattered to pieces, scrambling and vanishing into a familiar void of pitch blackness before she even had time to blink.

The instant she had crossed over the threshold of the game . . . she had _glitched._

Before Vanellope even knew what was happening, the pieces of the world had suddenly reassembled around her with a final flash of turquoise binary, and all at once she was no longer approaching the initial descent of the Rainbow Bridge . . . she was rapidly drawing up to the finish line at the start of the Royal Raceway, her pumping legs undeterred by the spontaneous glitch and still sprinting furiously for all she was worth.

No sooner had she reappeared running toward the finish line than Vanellope abruptly discovered that the road beneath her was inexplicably cracked and broken into large, jagged fragments of sugar-crystal paving, and before she could stop herself she had snagged her foot on the edge of one and them and tripped flat on her face. She skidded forward for a few feet, cringing with pain as her chin and the heels of her hands were badly skinned against the abrasive surface of the ruined track . . . but when she finally came to a halt and had risen dizzily to her feet, her brain was reeling too wildly to even notice the stinging red scrapes.

_She . . . . she had __**glitched**__! The second she'd set foot back in Sugar Rush, she'd been able to __**glitch**__, just like normal . . . as if nothing had happened to her code at all!_

_But __**how**__? She'd seen Ralph glitch his way out of Masterwork, she __**knew **__the virus had stolen her ability . . . how could she possibly still be . . . ?_

But before she had even half a minute to try and come to grips with what had just happened, Vanellope's attention was ripped away by a familiar group of voices, erupting suddenly in a frantic chorus of terrified screams somewhere just up ahead of her. She looked up, and raw panic rushed back to hit her like a punch in the gut when she saw the Sugar Rush avatars all fleeing out of path of Ralph's violently swinging arms, just seconds before he began to rain down blow after earth-shattering on their candy karts, utterly pulverizing each one with a single strike of his fist.

Without stopping to think, Vanellope took off like a shot across the finish line, running straight toward Ralph just as the veritable stampede of Sugar Rush characters - citizens as well as racers, who had begun fleeing frantically out of the nearby town like ants from an anthill the second the tremors of destruction reached them - was running towards her in the opposite direction.

"Get to the station! Everyone GET TO THE STATION, _NOW!_" she screamed hoarsely as the small sea of brightly colored subjects rushed past her, bumping and jostling her thoughtlessly in their blind frenzy to reach the exit.

Ralph hadn't so much as glanced up at the rush of tiny figures fleeing away from him, keeping his head down and his fists slamming rhythmically into the cluster of candy-karts at his feet. By the time he'd smashed the last of them into utter smithereens, the Royal Raceway was entirely deserted except for him, and Vanellope.

Her chest heaving raggedly for breath, Vanellope staggered to a halt and pointed one last glance over her shoulder to make sure the last of the Sugar Rush citizens had reached the foot of the Rainbow Bridge and were on their way to the exit . . . from the other direction, she could see a thin stream of candy people fleeing down the lofted highway from the castle as well, and she breathed a trembling sigh of relief that, at the very least, she knew all of her subjects were going to make it safely outside the game.

Then . . . with her pulse pounding in her ears, her chest catching with a pang of surreal terror and grief so sharp that it almost crossed over into a sense of disbelieving calmness . . . Vanellope turned back, and began walking slowly toward Ralph.

He had moved on from the obliterated karts and racetrack and was now at work leveling the Assorted Fans section, splintering it to pieces beneath his fists as easily as if it were made of matchsticks. Vanellope kept her gaze fixed fearfully on his back as she drew steadily closer, forbidding herself to look away even when the sharp sting of tears began to threaten suddenly behind her eyes.

_Ralph . . . her own sweet, gentle __Ralph . . . to see him like this, just a mindless machine of destruction, a horribly cracked and grotesque reflection of himself . . . to see those glowing blue eyes, completely empty of any trace of feeling or consciousness . . . ._

_. . . it was almost more than she could bear._

She crept up silently toward him over the uneven remains of the track until she was standing less fifteen feet behind him, flinching and shielding her face with her hands whenever his fists send another shower of candy debris flying out from the stands as he methodically reduced them to brightly-colored rubble . . . for almost thirty full seconds, she just followed soundlessly behind him, her heart aching and her brain racing frantically for something, _anything _she could do or say that might be able to penetrate through the monstrous shell of the virus to the person inside . . .

Finally, unable to remain quiet a second longer, she cried out in a loud, choked voice . . .

"RALPH!"

He gave no sign that he heard her, but simply moved onto to the next stand, nearly cracking it clean in half with a single downward punch. She narrowed her eyes, blinking back the tears she refused to let fall, and tried again.

"I know you're still in there somewhere, Ralph, I know you can hear me! _Listen _to me . . . you've got to FIGHT THIS! You've got to take back _control!"_

KKCCRAAASH! He smashed apart the remains of Swizzle Malarkey's fan-stand, then continued calmly to the next.

Suddenly, without warning, a jolt of genuine anger seared Vanellope's insides, overpowering her other emotions and actually making her forget for a moment what she was up against. With a ragged snarl of frustration, she bent over and snatched up a fragment of candy-cane that had fallen beside her on the ground, then screamed furiously up at him,

"I said _FIGHT IT, _STINKBRAIN! STOP LETTING IT _DO THIS TO YOU! _YOU OVERGROWN _WRECKING BALL . . . _ARE YOU _THAT_ MUCH OF A PUSHOVER!? _FIGHT __**BACK**__!"_

She reeled back and threw the piece of candy-cane at him as hard as she could.

It bounced sharply off the back of his head, and the second it did . . . Ralph finally stopped. He froze with one fist raised in the air, ready to strike . . . for a few brief seconds, he stood there perfectly still . . . then, without the faintest hint of an expression on his face, he turned over his shoulder and looked down at her.

The instant his cold, glowing eyes fell across her, Vanellope's righteous fury evaporated, and she shrank back in sudden horror at what she'd just done. Her eyes widened, and she took a few trembling, staggering steps backward as Ralph slowly turned around to face her.

For a single second that seemed to last an eternity, the two of them held each other's gaze in dead silence . . . . then, without a hint of warning, as calmly and swiftly as if she were nothing more than the next object in his endless list of things waiting to be destroyed . . . Ralph balled up his fist and brought it crashing down on top of her before she could so much as draw a breath.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_Mike had lost sight of Vanellope at the last uphill rise of the Sugar Rush tunnel, just a few dozen paces before the bright, sunlit opening of the game came_ _blinking into view . . . but then, when she came struggling and panting for breath up the last stretch of the passage a few seconds later and looked out at the entrance_ _to the game up ahead, she saw . . . nothing._

_Her brow furrowing in frantic confusion, Mike slowed to a stop a few feet short of the tunnel opening and doubled over to catch her breath, bracing her hands on her knees and she darted her eyes back and forth down the empty Rainbow Road stretching before her._

_Vanellope was __**gone**__._

_Mike didn't allow herself the time to be shocked or to wonder where the little girl could have possibly vanished to . . . instead, she forced a deep breath into her lungs and kept running, passing out of the shadow of the tunnel and into the blaring sunlight of the game. She crossed over the peak of the Rainbow Bridge and continued down the descent at a frightening speed, gaining more and more momentum until her legs were pumping of their own accord, and one misstep would have sent her tumbling down head over heels for hundreds of yards . . . but she didn't give herself even an instant to think about it. There was only one thought blazing in her mind, searing repeatedly like a brand over and over in her consciousness . . ._

_**Have **__to find her . . . __**have **__to find her . . . __**have **__to find Vanellope, and get her out of here before she tries to stop -_

_"RALPH!" _

_Just as she was finally nearing the foot of the Rainbow Bridge, Mike glanced up from her rapidly pedaling feet for a split second, and instantly saw him, the unmistakable tower of his bulk flashing in her vision like a frightening heartbeat. He was standing a ways off in the distance, pounding his fists down on something indistinguishable near the far end of the Royal Raceway square . . . . but the next second, before she had a chance to slow herself down or veer out of the way, she was abruptly met head-on with a stampeding swarm of terrified children and candy-citizens, all racing frantically toward the exit of the game. _

_Mike let out a reflexive cry of alarm as the wave of characters parted around her and tore past without so much as a passing glance. After thirty harrowing seconds, she finally managed to push her way through the last of panicking exodus and stumble to a halt at the end of the Royal Raceway. Sweat was pouring down her forehead, her chest heaving as she sucked in ragged gasps of air so deeply her lungs burned . . . but the instant she looked up, squinted down the track ahead of her and realized what was happening past the finish line . . . she stopped breathing altogether._

_For a split second, Mike froze, rooted to the ground in horror as she watched the tiny, distant speck that was Vanellope edging her way closer and closer up behind Ralph as he was indifferently pounding the racing stands to pieces under his fists . . . . then, a streak of protective terror shot through her like a lightning bolt, and the next second she was sprinting toward them as fast as her feet would carry her, dodging around the gaping cracks and jagged up-thrusts of the ruined racetrack, ignoring the aching cries of her already spent muscles._

_She ran, and ran, and ran . . . she saw Ralph stop what he was doing and turn around slowly to look down at Vanellope, who froze, petrified, under his gaze . . . she saw Ralph raising his fist in the air . . . ._

_She ran. She ran and ran, as she had never run before in her life . . . but it was no use. _

_By the time she'd finally reached them . . . it was already too late._

_She watched the fist come crashing down._

BBOOOOMM.

"VANELLOPE! _**NO**__!"_

Mike's hoarse, trembling shriek of denial echoed through the deserted square of the Royal Raceway. Her feet seemed to go numb underneath her, but even as she stopped running and fell stumbling to her knees in disbelieving horror just short of the finish line, she couldn't tear her eyes away from the spot on the track up ahead where Vanellope had been standing a split second ago . . . the exact spot where Ralph's fist was now half-buried in the jagged crater he'd just created, a faint cloud of sugar dust rising up around his knuckles as he stared blankly downward.

_No . . . no . . ._

_No, no, no **no **. . . ._

Time seemed to stop. She should have been gasping, she should have been teetering on the verge of physical collapse . . . but she wasn't. She could scarcely make herself breathe at all.

For one frozen, hollow, empty moment of perfect silence in the wake of the shuddering blow, she knelt there on the cracked remains of the Sugar Rush finish line and just stared.

Then . . . as calmly as if nothing had happened at all . . . Ralph loosened his fist from the track, straightened up, and went back to destroying the stands.

Mike couldn't move. She felt as if were about to be sick, or faint . . . there was a nauseous, suffocating pain beginning to form at the bottom of her throat . . . but it didn't matter. Quite suddenly, nothing mattered anymore.

_Everything was already lost._

Even as the silent, open-mouthed tears began streaming down her face and all but completely blurred her vision, Mike still couldn't bring herself to look away from the crater.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_"Alright . . . " _Felix said quietly, turning to look back at his wife through the dim, musky light of the basement in the Niceland apartment building, " . . . this is it. You ready, sweetheart?"

Calhoun didn't speak. She just cocked the laser pistol in her hands with a sharp, finite _snick, _narrowed her eyes down at the angled cellar hatch on the concrete wall in front of them, and nodded.

"And you're sure there's nothing I can say to make you go back upstairs and wait outside with the Nicelanders?"

His wife snorted bluntly through her nose as if this were the funniest statement she'd heard in days.

"Nothing doing, short stack. You said it yourself . . . wherever you go, I'm staying with you. No _flex on this one, _pal."

Felix couldn't help but close his eyes and smirk softly at the deliberate irony of her words. He drew in a long, deep, steadying breath . . . then slowly let it out again.

When he opened his eyes, his smile was gone.

"I love you, Tammy," he said quietly.

There were five seconds of solemn, weighted silence.

_"I love you, Felix," _Calhoun whispered under her breath.

Without hesitating another moment - _for fear that he would lose his nerve completely if he allowed himself to dwell even one second longer on the idea of his wife, in her weakened condition, going in with him to face off against the living virus itself _- Felix reached out one hand and calmly, deliberately punched in the familiar sequence of the universal cheat code on the large console that was set into the hatch door of the Fix-It Felix Jr. code room.

_Up, up, down, down . . . left right, left right . . . B, A . . . Start._

With an automated lurch_, _the plastic control panel rotated slowly to one side until the sharp, rusty _clink _of the lock unclasping resonated dully behind the sheet metal.

Felix set his jaw . . . took the handles of the hatch doors in both hands . . . and heaved them open.


	43. Chapter 42: And That's Good

**A/N; **Wow. Just . . . wow. Can I just say one thing?

SWEETNESS _CRUMPS, THIS CHAPTER TURNED OUT TO BE STUPID LONG AND **STUPID HARD TO WRITE.**_

But I guess that's what happens when you're trying to get a Frankenbeast ready to be put down. Blargh. I just don't even know anymore. Hope you enjoy this chapter anyway, illustration is posted on my dA.

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted concepts or characters mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 42: . . . And That's Good_

Felix set his jaw . . . took the handles of the hatch doors in both hands . . . and heaved them open.

The rusted hinges emitted a sharp, cringing whine of protest . . . the iron doors fell down with a heavy clatter against the basement floor . . . and then, everything seemed to go deathly silent as the pitch-black nothingness of the Fix-Felix Jr. code room yawned open before them.

Felix hesitated a split second - Calhoun thought she heard him give a single, thick swallow of apprehension - then, without another word or glance back at her, he set off marching down the concrete steps into the darkness, his hammer drawn and clutched readily in his fist. She followed him closely, her pistol raised at eye level and her trained footfalls creeping soundlessly on the stairs . . . though after a moment, she realized the pointlessness of bothering to try and sneak up on the virus unnoticed.

_This wasn't some ordinary, every-day dogfight they were getting themselves into. The element of surprise would give them no advantage over __**this **__adversary._

Calhoun had never been inside the Fix-It Felix Jr. code room before, but it didn't take her long to see that it was very unlike the one in her own game. The most noticeable difference was gravity. In Hero's Duty - as well as in most of the more modern games, as far as she knew - the programming core was a weightless vacuum, a physically anomalous chamber both contained within the structure of the game and simultaneously existing outside of it, beyond the jurisdiction of its laws and limitations . . . but _this place . . . _so far, the code room of her husband's retro plat-former seemed like little more than a physical extension of the game-world itself. The soft tread of their footsteps echoed lightly as they crept forward, and although she could see nothing but darkness all around them, Calhoun had the distinct feeling that there were walls close by on either side of her.

When they had ventured far enough inside that the dim light streaming through the cellar doors no longer cast any shadows from their legs across the floor, Felix came to an abrupt halt.

_"Alright," _he whispered tensely, and Calhoun could practically hear the nervous sweat beading at his temples; _" . . . here we go, Tammy. Stick close behind me, and don't do __**anything **__until we get a good look at what we're up against."_

_"Copy that." _Out of military habit, she said the words in an automatic, emotionless murmur . . . but secretly, her heart was hammering so loudly in her ears that she could scarcely hear herself.

Felix continued forward, at a much slower and more cautious pace than before. Calhoun followed suit, her knees bent and her center of gravity low to the ground, muscles coiled and ready to spring at an instant's notice . . . and then, all at once, they had suddenly passed beneath a low archway that was only distinguishable by an edge of sharp, solid blackness overhead that immediately opened up into a large underground chamber which would have been as dark as the entry tunnel, had it not been illuminated from its center by a dim, gently pulsing golden light.

It took a brief moment for Calhoun to realize that the glowing network of winding pipes and clunky, pixilated capsules hanging twenty feet above their heads near the ceiling of the cavern was the Fix-It Felix Jr. program core . . . it was so stiff and clumsy-looking that for a few seconds, she'd thought it must have been some kind of plumbing or electrical system for the apartment building above. But as they took a few steps further into the wide, dome-shaped room, she squinted up at the code boxes and saw that each one had a simplistic label stamped across its side in large, black, eight-bit letters.

. . . . _Bulldozer, Forest Backdrop, Building, Stump, Brick Pile . . . ._

"Okay . . . if I remember _correctly_ . . . " Felix was muttering under his breath as they cautiously inched their way forward, their heads tilted back and staring up at the glowing programming as they went, " . . .Ralph's module is close to mine, almost in the center of the network_, _so it _should _be somewhere right . . . about . . . _here."_

The moment they reached the middle of the room and the core of the code nest abruptly came into view, Felix stopped dead in his tracks and trailed off in a low, stunned whisper of both revulsion and amazement.

"Oh . . . my . . . _land . . . "_

Calhoun froze beside him, her eyes narrowing incredulously and her lip curling in an unconscious look of disgust.

For a few seconds, they both stood stock still and stared in rigid horror up at the monstrous thing hanging above their heads . . . Calhoun's fingers tightened reflexively around the laser pistol, but Felix quickly shook himself and raised his hand to stop her.

_"Don't! Don't shoot!" _he hissed, his voice pale and heavy with suppressed fear. Slowly . . . ever so slowly . . . he lifted his hand and pointed to a nearby spot on the wall. _"Just go . . . g-go get the ladder, sweetheart."_

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_For a single second that seemed to last an eternity, the two of them held each other's gaze in dead silence . . . . then, without a hint of warning, as calmly and swiftly as if she were nothing more than the next object in his endless list of things waiting to be destroyed . . . Ralph balled up his fist and brought it crashing down on top of her before she could so much as draw a breath._

Vanellope's eyes shot wide. A cold, terrifying numbness locked her body in its paralyzing grip as she watched the impossibly enormous fist rise high into the air, then come plummeting straight towards her with all the deadly indifference of a comet hurtling down from space.

She did it without thinking. It was faster than a mere reaction, too rapid and instantaneous to even be called a reflex . . . one split second, she was rooted to the spot while Ralph's fist blocked out the sun overhead and eclipsed her in the shadow of its bulk, a hair's-breadth away from the top of her head . . . the next, everything had scrambled and gone dark, the cracked remains of the racetrack disappearing from under her feet and the monstrous knuckles vanishing overhead.

Vanellope glitched . . . was lost in the darkness and nonexistence of the space between the code for a single second . . . then sucked in a sharp, staggering breath and found herself collapsing on her face against something flat and solid, with a shock of dizzying pain jolting down from the crown of her head and issuing through her entire body.

_She had done it. She had escaped_. Unconscious instinct had taken over and glitched her to safety . . . but it had happened less than a millisecond too late. She had made it out from underneath the deadly, flattening impact of Ralph's fist, but not before the edge of his hand had made fleeting, instantaneous contact with the top of her head, hitting her with less than one thousandth of the foot-pounds of force that left a two-foot deep crater of sugar dust in the track . . . too light and fast a strike to disrupt the glitch entirely, but still powerful enough to follow her through it and cripple her to her hands and knees when she reappeared on the other side.

For a few seconds, Vanellope was convinced she hadn't made it in time. The blow to her head had felt so intense, and the pain shuddering through her so staggering, she was positive that glitch or no glitch, she'd been crushed internally under Ralph's fist and was currently in the process of dying.

_I wonder if I'll regenerate afterwards? _a small voice pondered fleetingly at the back of her mind as she lie flat on her stomach on the ground, eyes squeezed shut and paralyzed with silent agony. _I'm in my own game, but with all the damage Ralph's probably done to the code already . . . not to mention the damage from my malfunction . . . I wonder if my programming is still going to work at all?_

_Maybe this is it . . . . maybe this really is the end._

_Oh, well . . . I guess there are worse ways to go._

For another moment of surreal silence and morbid calmness, Vanellope simply lay frozen in place and waited for it to be over.

Then . . . gradually . . . the excruciating pain in her head began to lessen ever so slightly, and she became increasingly aware of the tangible sensation of the dusty ground beneath her fingers, the warmth and stuffy closeness of the sweet-smelling air around her. As the seconds ticked by and nothing seemed to be happening, she gingerly tested her still stunned and aching body, and was amazed to discover that she still had arms and legs and fingers and toes that wiggled responsively at her command.

Vanellope blinked her eyes open.

She _wasn't _dead . . . she was alive! Alive, and surrounded on all sides by a pale, diffuse red light . . . and there was a ceiling, hanging so low above her that she would have struck her face on it if she'd tried to sit up. Gently rubbing her hand on the crown of her still throbbing head - which she found was now warm and swollen with an incredible goose-egg - Vanellope squinted around in confusion for another few seconds until the realization of where she was abruptly dawned on her.

_That's right . . . _she thought hazily to herself, a vivid burst of visual memory running through her mind as she looked past her feet toward what she now saw was the interior of a flap of red-and-white striped taffy fabric . . . _I know why I glitched here without thinking . . . it's because I've hidden from Ralph here before! I'm underneath one of the popcorn stands right next to the finish line!_

Less than five seconds after Vanellope made this discovery, the cramped pocket of air around her exploded with the deafening sound of heavy candy support beams cracking in half like pretzel sticks.

_KKCCRAASH!_

Vanellope cried out reflexively and covered her head with her arms, but the shower of crushing debris she was expecting never came. She opened her eyes, and immediately squinted in the glaring sunlight now beaming down around her. She was no longer hidden beneath the popcorn stand . . . she was sitting on open ground, completely exposed, with the splintered wreckage of the knocked-over stand lying in a heap behind her.

And there, towering less than ten feet in front her . . . with his punching arm frozen in midair, and a bizarre, widened expression in his glowing blue eyes that - in his condition - was the closest he could possibly come to a look of surprise . . . stood Ralph.

They blinked at each other.

Then, before Vanellope even had time to summon another escape glitch, she let out a sharp, involuntary gasp of alarm as what looked like a bright green lasso shot out of nowhere, looped itself around Ralph's neck, and wrenched him aside so sharply he actually almost lost his footing. He staggered one heavy step to the right and gripped the cord with his hand, forgetting all about Vanellope and jerking his head in the direction from which the attack had come.

The instant his eyes were off of her, Vanellope glitched . . . this time, with a conscious destination planted firmly in her mind.

She vanished in a flurry of turquoise pixels, and by the time her body had fully rematerialized at the far end of the Royal Raceway - a vantage point from which she could see the entirety of the square, and Ralph standing not too far away at the end of his trail of wreckage, with the green lasso still taut around his neck - she was already running, her feet frantically pounding on the ruined pavement back toward the finish line, and toward the person she had known she was going to see before she looked up and saw her.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_"MIKE, are you CRAZY!? GET AWAY FROM HIM!"_

Michelangela froze.

The surrendered expression of grief and rage that had been etched on her tear-streaked face abruptly vanished, blanking in disbelief at the sound of the shrill, desperate voice that had suddenly screamed out somewhere not far behind her. It cut through the stillness of the desolated raceway like a heartbeat, making her all but immediately forget about the fifteen-foot monster straining at the other end of her brushstroke. Her white-knuckled grip loosened on the brush handle, and she barely even noticed when Ralph abruptly glitched himself out of the noose, the green rope of paint going limp and falling down to the ground in a long, narrow splatter.

_No . . . it . . . it __**can't **__be . . . ._

"_Va_ . . . Va_nellope?" _she whispered, turning to look slowly behind her . . . just in time to see the frantic, wide-eyed little girl come sprinting up the last few feet between them and launch herself into the air straight at Mike.

"You _idiot, LOOK OUT!" _Vanellope shrieked angrily as she wrapped her arms around Mike's torso and clung like a koala bear.

Her mouth hanging open, too shocked to speak or even breathe, Mike suddenly became aware of a steady, earth-shaking rhythm of thundering footsteps, drawing rapidly closer and closer behind them . . . she whirled around, arms gripping Vanellope unconsciously to her chest, and saw Ralph charging toward them down the track like two tons of simian locomotive, his eyes still eerily empty and expressionless . . . and then, before she could blink, everything was suddenly breaking up and scrambling into pieces before her eyes.

Mike gaped speechlessly as Ralph, the track, the Royal Raceway and the whole of Sugar Rush itself vanished in a rippling wave of pixels and was replaced with absolute darkness. For a fraction of time too infinitesimal to measure, she was hurtling through a black void with Vanellope still clutched rigidly in her arms . . . and the next thing she knew, the world had instantaneously reassembled around her and she was stumbling, falling down flat on her backside with a startled _oof_.

Her mind reeling so fast it made her physically dizzy, Mike sat perfectly still for a moment and sucked in gasping breaths, her jaw hanging and her eyes bugging at the sprawling view of Sugar Rush that now lay spread out before her for miles in every direction. She was sitting at the top of the Rainbow Bridge, just in front of the game entrance . . . far below them, she saw the ruined remains of the Royal Raceway and the distant figure of Ralph, struggling for a brief moment to extricate his fist from the fresh hole he'd punched in the track, the hole from which they'd just narrowly avoided becoming an immutable part . . . and there, sitting in her lap and looking up at her with an almost vicious sneer on her flushed, panting face . . .

"What in holy _hot rod _were you _thinking, _Chickadee!?" Vanellope demanded furiously, grabbing the front of her smock with her small fists and giving her a violent shake. "You almost just got yourself _killed! _Did you honestly think you were going to stop him with that lousy _paintbrush _of yours!? He's got my _glitching _abilities, dummy, _nothing's _going to be able to hol - "

But the rest of Vanellope's words were muffled into an indiscernible squeak of surprise as Mike seized the girl in her arms and hugged her so fiercely into her chest that her face was completely hidden from view. Fresh tears welled up in Mike's eyes and rolled down into Vanellope's hair as she all but half-smothered her in the embrace, rocking her gently from side to side and emitting a continual stream of gasping noises that were lost somewhere between hysterical sobs and bursts of incredulous laughter.

"You're alive! You're_ alive!" _she cried over and over again, nuzzling her face against the crown of Vanellope's head in blissful disbelief. "You're _ALIVE! _Oh, _Vanellope, _I was so _scared . . . _for a minute, I actually thought you were - "

But she stopped abruptly, her tears of joy ceasing when Vanellope suddenly let out an audible wince of pain and pulled away from her. It was only then that Mike noticed the ugly lump swollen just visibly beneath her dark, candy-speckled hair.

"You're _hurt!_" she cried hollowly, letting Vanellope down to the ground and tenderly inspecting the area with her hands.

"Come on, lay off . . . . I said _lay off, _Mike,I'm _fine!" _Vanellope snapped, but she shuddered with a telling cringe even as Mike reluctantly drew her hands away. "It was my own dumb fault, anyway . . . I thought maybe I could get through to him, but . . . but . . . " she paused for a moment, the sharpness of her tone suddenly crumbling into despair; " . . . but it's just no use. It's . . . it's like there's just _nothing _inside him anymore."

Mike bit her lip and looked away, the sadness in Vanellope's eyes too much for her to bear at the moment . . . instead, she rose solemnly to her feet and looked back down at the distant Royal Raceway, where Ralph had once again forgotten them and resumed his systematic destruction of the game, punching out the supports at one end of the golden arch above the finish line so that the entire structure came crumbling down. Mike shook her head miserably as she watched him.

"I'm . . . . I'm so sorry, Vanellope," she suddenly heard herself muttering in a low, choked whisper. "I'm _so, so sorry. _All of this happened because of me . . . your game is going to be de_stroyed, _and . . . and it's _all my fault . . . "_

She trailed off sorrowfully, and for a moment, neither of them said anything. The pall of defeat hung so heavily in the air between them that Mike's apology sounded empty and superfluous, even to herself. Vanellope moved to stand beside her, and the two of them stared in bleak, hopeless silence down at the remains of the Raceway as Ralph was finishing off the last of the candy stands.

_Somewhere inside, Mike knew that it was deadly foolishness for the two of them to be just standing there the way they were . . . they ought to be running to safety, they ought to have bolted straight out of the game the instant they were back on the Rainbow Bridge . . . . but all of a sudden, there just didn't seem to be any point in running away. _

_Standing there, watching helplessly as the grotesque transformation of what had once been the most important person in the world to her laid ceaseless, unfeeling waste to a world he'd once given his life to protect . . . watching that, it was as if everything was already over._

After a long, heavy moment of silence, Vanellope suddenly spoke up - in a blank, half-hearted tone that said she had truly already given her game up for lost . . .

"Well . . . _there it is."_

Mike started, turned her eyes in the direction Vanellope was pointing, and a pit of cold, but grimly unsurprised fear balled up in her stomach when she saw an almost imperceptible glint of electric blue shining amidst the rubble at the far, far end of the Royal Raceway.

_The kill code . . . the same one that had deleted Masterwork from existence in just a few minutes._

Vanellope breathed a long, listless sigh of defeat.

"Wondered why it was taking so long," she muttered, her voice thick with unshed tears. "I guess . . . . this is really it, then. This is_ the end of Sugar Rush."_

Mike stared helplessly at the distant flash of blue, not knowing what she could possibly say to try and comfort her friend . . . . but then, after more than a full minute had passed, she narrowed her eyes in a quizzical frown as she abruptly realized that the line of electric blue hadn't spread more than halfway down the pile of wreckage from whence it had originated. It was progressing so slowly, in fact, that its movement wasn't even distinguishable to the naked eye.

Like a match striking up a flame and gleaming faintly - stubbornly - in the depths of an unfathomably dark room . . . the single glimpse of an idea flashed in Mike's brain.

"No," she said with a sudden, quiet firmness that made the little girl start and glance up at her, " . . . this _isn't _the end."

"What?"

Mike turned to look sharply at Vanellope, her face hardened with a determination that masked the turgid fear still palpitating in her chest.

"Your game isn't gone _yet_. You and I are still here . . . we can still _do something about it."_

"What . . . what are you _talking _about? What can we possibly do? Ralph's already released the kill code . . . there's no way to stop it now!"

"No, we can't _stop _it . . . but maybe we won't _have_ to. Masterwork is - _was - _an unfinished game, a prototype . . . that's why the kill code was able to erase it so quickly. But look how slowly it's spreading _here! _Your game is so complex, it might take the virus _hours _to wipe it out completely. There's _still time, _Vanellope. . . if you and I can slow Ralph down long enough to keep him from unleashing the code in multiple parts of Sugar Rush at once, then maybe we can buy enough time for Felix and Calhoun to delete the virus and save your game before it's erased!"

Vanellope's brow narrowed incredulously, her lips parting briefly in silence.

"So . . . so what are you suggesting!? That we just _stall him!?"_

Mike nodded.

"And how are we going to _do_ _that _without getting ourselves _killed?"_

Mike bent over and picked up her Battle-strokes brush from where it had fallen beside her when Vanellope teleported them to the Rainbow Bridge . . . then she straightened up, tapped the handle of the brush once against her open palm, and looked down at Vanellope with a grim stare of absolute seriousness.

"We're going to _cheat."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"This is a bad idea_," _Vanellope muttered anxiously as she eased her foot further down on the gas pedal of her kart, picking up speed as she raced down the lofted highway leading up to the Candy Castle. "This is a bad, _bad, __**bad **__idea_. . . "

"Don't worry, Vanellope. Everything's going to be okay," Mike murmured unconvincingly from her perch on the rear hood of the kart, raising her voice to make herself heard over the rumble of the engine and the whistle of the wind that flapped her hair behind her head like a flag.

Vanellope glared incredulously at her over her shoulder. "Yeah? How do _you _know!?"

Mike opened her mouth, hesitated, then looked away.

"I . . . I _don't. _You're just going to have to _trust me, _alright?"

Vanellope stifled a miserable groan into the palm of her hand and kept driving.

"Fabulous. We're _doomed."_

They reached the end of the palace road, and Vanellope skidded a hard left around the hairpin turn that would lead them back toward the Royal Raceway.

The last they'd seen of Ralph less than five minutes ago - before she had glitched them both up to the palace to retrieve her kart ( the only one left in the game still functioning ) - he had finished his calm, systematic destruction of the Raceway square and moved on to the adjacent town . . . now, as they went clipping along the nearly unrecognizable road at a cautious speed, veering around the larger cracks and craters and randomly strewn pieces of wreckage, he was nowhere to be seen.

Vanellope's throbbing heart crept higher and higher up into her throat as she rolled to a stop at the entrance to the village, her eyes roving anxiously across the array of mysteriously still-intact candy houses and buildings.

"Where _is _he?" she murmured, standing up in the pit of her idling kart and leaning over the windshield. "Why hasn't he wrecked the town yet?"

"I don't know . . . " Mike muttered suspiciously, her paintbrush gripped readily in both hands as she sat up straighter on the rear hood. " . . . but he's got to be around here _somewhere . . . "_

"Why don't I hear anything?" Vanellope whispered, sinking back into the driver's seat and slouching down, unconsciously trying to hide herself. "We should _hear him _wrecking things! This is a _bad idea, _Mike, I _know it . . . _"

"Don't . . . d-don't be scared," Mike leaned forward and patted her reassuringly on the shoulder, but failing to hide the tremulous note in her own voice. "Just keep driving, and keep your eyes peeled. He hasn't bothered to hide from us so far . . . we've _got _to come across him sooner or later."

Swallowing the dry lump in her throat, Vanellope obediently shifted into gear and drove forward over the bridge and into the town at a snail's pace, her kart popping and sputtering impatiently. The noises of the engine seemed to echo in the deathly stillness of the deserted village streets. For almost a full minute, they drove around the candy buildings in slow, winding circles, their heads swiveling constantly back and forth as they searched for any trace of destruction that might lead them to their target.

"I'm getting a _bad feeling _about this," Vanellope muttered, her hands gripping tighter on the wheel as she steered around yet another empty corner. "He was _here _just a few minutes ago, where could he - ?"

"THERE!"

Mike's voice cut her off in a shrill, startled cry so abrupt Vanellope yelped and jammed her foot on the brakes.

"Where!? _Where!?"_

_"There!"_

Frightened and confused, Vanellope jerked her head up in the direction Mike was pointing . . . and her breath seized in her chest.

Looming high above them in the near distance - far enough from the town that they couldn't make out its base, but close enough that they still had to tilt their heads back to look up at the peak of its narrow spire - was the craggy rise of Diet Cola Mountain . . . . and there, perched atop the summit and looking down at them like some monstrous, orange-and-burgundy bird of prey . . . stood Ralph.

They stared up at him in fear confusion for only a second . . . then, there was a flash of blue light and glitching pixels at the mountain's peak, and as abruptly as they'd spotted him . . . Ralph vanished.

Panic gripped Vanellope like a vice, and her hands froze on the steering-wheel . . . faintly, as if from far away, she heard someone screaming something desperately, and it was only when she forcibly shook herself out of her terrified stupor a few seconds later that she realized it was Mike.

"DRIVE! _DRIVE!"_

Her arms and legs rigid with panic, Vanellope fumbled frantically with the controls. Her hand slipped on the gearshift and accidentally threw it into reverse, her foot stamping aimlessly at the floor three times before she found the gas pedal . . . when she finally slammed it down on the fourth try, the kart pealed out with an ear-piercing squeal and rocketed backwards so forcefully that Mike was nearly thrown forward across the cockpit.

Before they had sped back in reverse more than twenty feet, a rippling burst of pixels flashed in midair directly above the place they'd stood idling seconds before, and the next instant, Ralph materialized out of thin air in front of them with his fists already balled together and reared high above his head.

_BBOOOOOMMM!_

The entirety of his massive, glitch-accelerated bulk came slamming down to the ground so close in front of them they felt the wind from his landing rush against their faces, the blow from his hands shuddered through the road beneath them like an earthquake. Before Vanellope knew what was happening, the wheels of her kart were swerving helplessly in the ripples of the tremor, and an enormous crack was splitting the road to pieces in front of her.

"NOW, VANELLOPE!" Mike screamed invisibly behind her. _"NOW!"_

Vanellope grit her teeth, wrench the wheel as hard as she could, and _glitched._

The kart, along with its two shell-shocked passengers, disappeared just as the sugar pavement beneath it was splintered into a web of jagged cracks . . . and less than a half-second later, it reappeared twenty yards away on the opposite side of Ralph, now spun around and speeding nose-first straight toward his still turned and hunched-over back.

For a split second, there was no sound but the deafening roar of the engine as they drove on a sheer, unflinching collision course with Ralph's mountainous back . . . then, at the last second before impact, Vanellope veered to the right so sharply the steering column nearly locked up.

In the farthest corner of peripheral vision, she caught a fleeting glimpse of Mike's arms, swinging her brush for all she was worth . . . and then a single, arrow-straight stream of blinding yellow paint shoot out from its bristles and go whistling through the air.

_TTTSSZZIIING!_

Before he had time to stand up straight, the yellow streak hit Ralph's right shoulder like the crack of a whip and stuck to him like glue. The second she heard the shot strike home, Vanellope ground down on the brakes and swerved the kart in a hard, banking left, then punched the gas and kept the wheel locked so that she was speeding around Ralph in a tight, continuous circle.

The paint fed continually out of Mike's brush like a line from a fishing pole, her right hand trembling on the handle and her left gripping the spoiler of the kart for dear life . . . and before ten seconds had elapsed, the two of them had wound the brushstroke around Ralph so many times, he was almost nothing but yellow from the neck down.

"We _got him!" _

Vanellope straightened the front wheels of the kart and pulled out of the loop, zipping twenty yards down the unbroken half of the road before slamming on the brakes and pealing out in a hundred and eighty degree spin so that they were once again facing Ralph from a safe distance.

"He can't break it!" Mike gritted through clenched teeth as she held onto the brush handle in a white-knuckled death grip, the paint quivering tight as a bowstring as Ralph wrestled futilely to free himself from his semi-elastic binds. "As long as its attached to the _brush, _he can't - "

_Glitch._

Ralph vanished in a ripple of pixels and reappeared outside the coils, which remained standing for a split second like a frozen yellow tornado, then collapsed on the road and splattered his left side with paint. He didn't flinch.

_"Hit him again!"_ Vanellope cried . . . but before she finished speaking, Mike had already snapped off the limp brushstroke and sent another whistling out in a shot of blazing red.

The paint looped around Ralph's shoulders, but this time he had already glitched away before she could pull it tight. He reappeared once more, and once more Mike pounced on him with another shot so rapidly he couldn't avoid it . . . then again, and again and again and _again, _until it was all Vanellope could do to follow the frenzied back-and forth riot of paint and pixels and splattering color with her eyes. With every glitch, Ralph jolted incrementally further and further to the left so that he was moving in a wide, continual radius around the kart, crashing into houses and buildings as he went. Mike had risen to her feet on the rear hood and was rotating to follow him, swinging her brush like a drunken baseball batter so frantically that Vanellope could scarcely tell when one paint-stroke ended and another began.

How many surreal, wordless minutes the melee continued, she had no idea . . . but by the time he had worked his way in a half-circle around them and one side of the village street was almost entirely reduced to heaps of paint-splattered rubble, Vanellope's heart skipped a beat as she suddenly realized that there was something happening to Ralph's glitches.

With every teleportation, his form was beginning to wrack and shudder more and more violently . . . the bursts of pixels were growing brighter and wilder, and with each reappearance he seemed to be landing more heavily and haphazardly on his feet than before.

And then . . . suddenly . . . after vanishing out of a lime green noose that almost pinned his arms to his sides, Ralph reappeared in a scattered wave of pixels that rippled and distorted his body so viciously, it took him almost five full seconds to reconfigure entirely . . . and when he finally did, he staggered weakly, lost his balance . . . and collapsed down to one knee, catching himself on the ground with both hands.

Mike flinched and froze in mid-swing, her chest heaving as she panted. For a few seconds, they both stared at Ralph in reeling disbelief as he remained hunched over and motionless, his only movement a shallow rise and fall of his shoulders, almost as if he were out of breath. A few stray pixels dashed across the surface of his body, and Vanellope almost dared to think she saw him cringe faintly in their wake.

She squinted at him for another moment in baffled silence . . . then, all at once, the pieces clicked together in her mind, and she whirled around in the driver's seat to look at Mike in stunned, wide-eyed revelation.

"_He can't glitch anymore,_" she whispered, then rose her voice quick to a shrill, urgent cry - "Mike . . . he _can't GLITCH ANYMORE! _HIT HIM _NOW!"_

Still too breathless and reeling to either question or comprehend what she was saying, Mike obediently reared back, summoned up the last remaining vestiges of her energy, and let out a ragged half-scream of effort as she swung the brush so hard she nearly lost her footing on the hood of the kart. A streak of white paint flew toward Ralph like a bolt of lightning . . . . but at the last second, he shot up one massive forearm in a frontal block and intercepted it.

It happened too quickly for them to react. The white brushstroke snaked rapidly around Ralph's wrist and in one fluid, instantaneous motion . . . he seized the taut cord in his hand, looked up, and _pulled._

Mike's scream was cut off in a sharp, jolted gasp as she was wrenched clean off the back of the kart and went flying through the air like a rag-doll, her hands locked in a terror-grip on the wooden brush handle.

"MIKE!" Vanellope shouted reflexively, making a helpless grab at her feet as she went sailing away. She scrambled in a blind panic to throw herself out of the kart after her, but it was already too late. Ralph had regained his strength and bolted instantly to his feet, his left arm raised above his head and the brushstroke clamped in his vice-like grip so that the tether hung down in front of him . . . and there was Mike, dangling helplessly from the end of it and staring up at his empty, expressionless eyes in a speechless paroxysm of fear.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Felix's wife was shaking her head in grim mortification as she crept quietly back to where he was standing at the center of the code room, the folding ladder which she had retrieved from its hook on the wall gripped under her arm.

"I come from a game populated almost _exclusively _by ravenous, brainless monsters," she muttered under breath, glancing intermittently up at the ceiling as she carefully unfolded the ladder. "I've watched them mutate into disgusting hybrids of whatever they consume . . . including each _other. _I've crushed their slime-filled eggs with my bare hands. I've been splattered head to toe with so much of their half-mechanical _guts _that I've had to clean a slurry of metal shavings and _mucous secretion _out of my _ears _at the end of the day. Felix . . . I have seen some horrible, _horrible _things in my life . . . . but I have neverseen _anything_ as sickening as _that."_

Felix followed the line of her jabbing thumb with his eyes back up to the core of the code network hanging above their heads . . . and the moment his gaze fell once more upon the object of his wife's disgust, his small body was wracked with a rippling shudder that was half fear and half shared repulsion.

In retrospect, Felix wasn't sure exactly what he'd expected the virus itself to look like . . . but he'd assumed that he'd know it when he saw it, that it would stand out in frightening irregularity from the rest of the Fix-It Felix Jr. programming.

What he _hadn't_ imagined was that the mere sight of it would make his stomach turn.

The instant they'd first laid eyes on the _thing_ that was latched onto Ralph's code box, he and his wife had known immediately - beyond the shadow of a doubt - that it was what they'd been looking for . . . the virus hostbody, the core accumulation of every fragment of stolen code from every infected character throughout the arcade. The closest thing that Felix could think to compare it to was a spider, or an octopus . . . yet it was immeasurably more hideous than any ugly mutation of those creatures combined.

The bulk of the virus's body was like an enormous, bloated melon, so engorged with stolen information that's its glowing, electric blue skin was stretched to a paper thinness, with masses of blue light pulsing and moving visibly beneath the surface. It was more than ten times the size of Ralph's code box, so large that it crowded other boxes out of the center of the network, and the little gold-colored module which bore his friend's name was more of a thorn embedded in the monster's side than the anchor to which it clung. Masses of ropy, vein-like feelers were coiled inseparably around the code box, penetrating through its protective shell and pulsing with surges of blue light.

Jutting out from the main sphere of the virus were tentacles . . . dozens of lithe, thick tentacles that snaked their way between the golden pipes of the code network to latch onto the ceiling beyond, helping to bear the weight of the grotesquely swollen body like a spider resting in the hammock of its own web . . . and at the bottom fore of the creature's bulk, pointed menacingly down at the floor, was its face - if it could be _called _a face - the jagged lines of the eyes and mouth sealed firmly shut, almost as if the thing were asleep.

Calhoun averted her eyes and shuddered as she finished planting the feet of the ladder firmly underneath the center of the network.

"I still say you should let me try _blasting the thing _first," she muttered.

Felix swallowed a thick lump in throat and reluctantly shook his head.

"Bad idea, Tammy . . . we don't know what that thing is _capable of_. We can't risk doing anything that might provoke it without _killing _it. Our best shot is for me to go in and man . . . m-muh . . . m-_manually _try to remove it."

Calhoun gave him a disapproving frown, but said nothing. His hands trembling and his teeth clenched so tightly his jaw ached, Felix began to ascend the ladder. His wife held the apparatus steady with one hand and kept her laser pistol gripped firmly in the other, the nose of the gun trained straight up at the virus, ready to fire a compacted round of scorching plasma directly into its face at the first sign of danger.

Throughout the past thirty-one years, Felix had scaled up the same eighteen rungs of this same ladder dozens of times on regular maintenance trips into his game's code-room . . . but this time, the climb seemed to take longer than every past climb put together. Every rung that he rose brought him closer and closer to the creature in agonizingly slow increments, until all of a sudden he found himself perched at the top and standing less than two feet from the virus's huge, hovering face.

His breath caught in his chest, and for one horrible instant he froze like a statue on the top rung of the ladder and stared helplessly up at the monster before him. Up close, the surface of the virus was crackling with skirmishes of electricity, its body pulsating rhythmically, almost as if it were breathing. A stifling heat was radiating out from its skin, making the beads of sweat on Felix's forehead run down over his brow and sting his eyes.

Felix blinked, grit his teeth against the twinge of nausea that rolled in his stomach, and forced himself to concentrate instead on the code box hanging a few inches in front of him, the letters of Ralph's name almost obscured by the tentacles wrapped around it. His hands hovering nervously over the module as he scrutinized every inch of it, trying to determine the best point of entry . . . after a short moment of hesitation, he picked out the largest patch of the golden surface still accessible between the virus's feelers . . . braced himself . . . and tapped it twice with the tip of his finger.

Ralph's code box blinked twice, then gave a familiar _blip-blip _sound and opened up into a transparent configuration of his individual code segments, each connected to one another by thin, golden threads of programming. Felix flinched and darted his eyes anxiously back up at the virus . . . but it gave no sign that it was even aware of his presence. It's tentacles had even parted back responsively from the front side of the code box as it opened, offering full access to its inner workings.

Felix exhaled heavily, then steadied himself and peered closer into Ralph's programming. At first glance, his antagonist's code structure looked deceptively normal . . . as far as he could make out, there was nothing missing, broken, or disconnected. For one frantic moment as he gently pushed his way past the outer segments, delving deeper and deeper into the system, Felix was half afraid that he wouldn't find a code connection to the virus at _all . . ._ but then, all of a sudden, as he was parting aside a cluster of threads and looking in at the innermost core of Ralph's code box - the physical, tangible heart of everything that was, ever had been, and ever _would_ be his friend - he saw it.

Instead of the soft, glowing golden color that it _should _have been, the core of Ralph's code box - the unifying knot that linked all of his threads and segments together in a single web - was _blue. _It stood out coldly from the rest of his programming, pulsing with the same eerie blue light as the body of the virus above it.

As Felix narrowed his eyes and peered in closer at it, he realized that the blue light was coming from countless, infinitesimal threads intertwined so closely with the golden ones of the code that they were almost indistinguishable. The invading threads twisted out from the program core, thickened, and became the fat, blue tentacles that had wormed their way through the protective shell, connecting the virus to Ralph's code at such a microscopic level that the two were practically fused together into a single entity.

Felix gulped.

"What do you see?" his wife's voice came hissing anxiously from the bottom of the ladder. "Is it something you can _fix?"_

"You . . . y-you should move back and take cover, Tammy," he replied, his voice shaking.

"What? _Forget it!" _she shot back, taking a single, defiant step up the ladder and raising her pistol higher into the air. "I'm staying right here where I can cover you! One false move, and this tub is _target practice!"_

Knowing that it was pointless to argue with her further, Felix drew in a long breath to steady himself, turned his cap backwards to allow himself the closest possible access to the code . . . and slowly, tremblingly, reached one gloved hand towards the knot of blue of golden threads pulsing silently in front of him.

_Please, _he found himself praying silently in the bottom of his heart . . . _please . . . __**please**__, let this work . . . ._

Felix held his breath, pushed his arm the last few inches forward into the core of the box . . . and without another second's hesitation, clamped his hand down around the twisted cord of blue tentacles feeding into the heart of Ralph's code.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

For one brief moment of paralyzed horror, Ralph, Mike, and Vanellope each remained perfectly still.

An absolute silence permeated the ruins of the candy village around them, and Vanellope stood frozen with one leg swung out of her kart and her hands trembling on the windshield, positive that Michelangela was going to be killed in front her at any second.

_Let go of the brush! LET GO OF THE BRUSH! _she tried to scream . . . but found that she was unable force the words from her open mouth. It wouldn't have made any difference if she had . . . Mike was as paralyzed in the horror of the moment as she was, and she hung from the end of the paintbrush in front of Ralph's face as helplessly as a fish on a hook.

Then, just as Ralph began to raise his right hand menacingly toward her . . . .

. . . . he stopped.

For a split second, Ralph froze like a statue with his arms in midair, his head jerking up to stare blankly straight ahead of him, as if something utterly monumental had just occurred to him without warning . . . and yet the fixed, expressionless mask of his face never wavered.

For one split second, he just stood there perfectly motionless, with Mike still dangling from his lifted wrist . . . . then, without so much as a single sound, he turned on his heel and took off at an all out sprint toward the Sugar Rush exit.

Ralph whirled around so sharply that the paint was severed from the bristles of Mike's brush with a violent _snap, _the whip-like crack of the tether tossing her ten feet and then dropping her like a stone back to the road. She rolled a few feet, and before she'd come to a complete stop Vanellope had already glitched frantically to her side.

"Mike!? _Mike! _Chickadee, look at me . . . are you _okay!?"_

Dazed, pale, and horribly shaken . . . but otherwise unhurt . . . Mike stared unseeingly into a space for a moment before giving herself a violent shaking and bolting to her feet.

"I'm . . . I'm _fine . . . _come on, we've got to follow him!" she muttered fervently, wasting no time running back to the kart. Vanellope glitched herself back into the driver's seat, and seconds later they were racing toward the game's exit as fast as the treacherously cracked roads would allow.

Far ahead of them, Ralph was already making his way up the Rainbow Bridge. He was charging forward so furiously that he was using his knuckles to spur himself along on either side, practically running on all fours like an ape and sending a steady rhythm of seismic shudders trembling back down the steeply rise of the road. He didn't so much as glance backwards when Vanellope glitched the kart ahead fifty yards at a time until they were racing along behind him at a distance just far enough to protect them from the thundering tremor of his footsteps . . . but the Rainbow Bridge still quaked frighteningly beneath them as they drove.

"I _get it _now! I know why I still have my glitch, even though everyone else lost their powers!" Vanellope shouted over the roar of the engine as she hunched low in the driver's seat and kept her eyes narrowed determinedly on the road, veering expertly left and right to avoid the sprays of grit kicked up by Ralph's hands and feet. "It's because of _you, _Mike. You ripped the infection out of my code ahead of schedule, so the virus only got a hack-job version of it . . . that's why Ralph got weaker when he glitched too many times! _That's _the key, Mike . . . that's the only way we can _stop him! _We've gotta force him to keep glitching until it wears him out, until he can't do it at _all_ . . . then maybe he'll be weak enough for us to trap him somehow!"

"_No . . . _no, I don't think so . . . " Mike said slowly, the gears in her head audibly turning as she crouched down on the rear hood and putting her head closer to Vanellope's. They picked up speed as they neared the summit of the bridge . . . Ralph had already barreled through the exit ahead of them and disappeared down the tunnel. ". . . I think he's _already _too weak to glitch anymore! Otherwise, why wouldn't he just glitch himself straight to wherever he's going now?"

"For that matter, where _is _he going now!?" Vanellope demanded anxiously as she floored the accelerator and shifted the kart into high gear. The walls of the Sugar Rush tunnel shook with Ralph's lumbering stride, his shadowy bulk almost wholly obscuring the path ahead of them. "One second he's about to squish you like a bug . . . and the next, he's high-tailing it out of here like the place is on _fire! _Where the gumdrops is he _going?"_

Mike was quiet for a moment, the deafening combination of the kart engine and the cacophony of Ralph's running seeming to grow louder with every nerve-wracking second that they drew closer to Game Central Station . . . and when she leaned forward and muttered in Vanellope's ear again, there was a note of a grim trepidation creeping suddenly into her voice.

_"I'm afraid I might have an idea . . ."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The instant his gloved hand clamped shut around the cluster of threads connecting the virus to the heart of Ralph's code, a blinding explosion of heat and electricity blasted Felix straight off the top of the ladder, a shower of scorching blue sparks bursting from the code box like a hail of shrapnel.

_**TTTSSZZZYYOOOOOOSH!**_

"FELIX!"

_TTSZEEOOM._

As the world spun rapidly around him, Felix's sharply ringing ears picked up the faint, distant-sounding noises of his wife's voice, followed by a single shot from her laser pistol . . . then, he felt himself collide headlong into something firm and armored that gave way beneath him, and all at once he and Tamora were clattering painfully to the floor in a jumbled heap of limbs. He heard the ladder hitting the ground shortly after them . . . and after that, the atmosphere of the code room was suddenly seized and split agonizingly to pieces by the most unbearable, high-pitched electric screech he had ever heard in his life.

_TTTSSSZZZYYEEEEIIIII!_

The shriek was utterly inhuman, and yet it was somehow still driven by a piercing overtone of explicit rage, as if the virus itself were consumed with venomous hatred for the physical creatures whose very existence it lacked the ability to fully comprehend.

His head throbbing, his pulse pounding deafeningly and his hands and arms tingling numbly from the electric burn that had instantaneously engulfed them, Felix felt himself being hoisted up and draped forward over something. Close by, he heard the muffled sounds of more gunshots punctuating the constant screech of the virus . . . but his ears were ringing so loudly that the noises seemed to be struggling through a wall of water to reach him.

He dizzily blinked his eyes open, but all he could see was darkness broken every few seconds by dim, hazy flashes of green and blue light. When he tried to speak, he almost couldn't hear his own voice.

"T . . . Tammy . . . _T-Tammy?"_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_TTTSSSZZZYYEEEEIIIII!_

_BLAMM._

_BLAMM._

_BLAMM, BLAMM, BLAMM BLAMM BLAMM._

"DIE! _DIE, _YOU SICK TUB OF SLIME, _**DIE**__!"_

Calhoun screamed savagely as she unloaded a volley of plasma shots directly into the swollen body above her, but each blast was absorbed through the membranous skin like water into a sponge. It shrieked and writhed briefly as if in some kind of pain, but recovered completely within seconds and attacked again.

The virus's eyes and mouth were now wide open, glaring holes of blinding white light that shone out from its face in a twisted imitation of rage as its tentacles darted at her like snakes from every direction in lightning-fast jabs, crackling with electricity.

Calhoun's heart was hammering in her mouth, her teeth bared in a furious snarl of panic as she fired off round after round in every direction, missing most of the tentacles but managing to keep them from creeping within a ten foot radius of her and her husband.

"T . . . Tammy . . . _T-Tammy?"_

Felix's voice struggled out weakly beside her ear, and she grunted with effort as she hoisted him higher over her left shoulder and gripped him protectively with one arm. Even the negligible weight of her husband's small body was a strain on her abnormally weakened muscles, and an exhausted sweat had broken out on her forehead after less than sixty seconds of fighting to keep the writhing appendages at bay. She was only able to land every fifth shot or so, and these seemed to be doing little more than working the virus into an even wilder frenzy of rage with each blast.

_She had to get them both of there . . . and she had to do it __**fast**__._

_BLAMM! BLAMM!_

Firing continually as she went, Calhoun began to walk backwards toward the exit, the virus's tentacles following her viciously with every step. Her wrist was beginning to throb from the repeated kickback of the weapon, the dark chamber of the Fix-It Felix Jr. Code room was lit with a perpetual rhythm of blinding green and blue flashes . . . and all the while, the ragged, blood-chilling screech of the creature on the ceiling continued on a single, unbroken note.

_TTTSSSZZZYYEEEEIIIII!_

_BLAMM! BLAMM!_

"Mmmm . . . T-Tammy . . . _Tammy, where . . . where . . . ?"_

"Everything's gonna be okay, sweetheart!" Calhoun grit loudly through her teeth, darting her eyes once rapidly down to the floor. Her legs were casting shadows across a square of dim light . . . the stairs leading up to the cellar hatch were close behind her now. "You just sit tight!"

_BLAMM! BLAMM! BLAMM!_

She fired three round in rapid succession straight between the virus's eyes . . . it squealed hideously, and for a split second, the wall of tentacles flinched back as their host body recoiled in pain.

Calhoun spun around and made a frantic break for the hatch. She had made it all the way to the final step when the farthest reaching tip of a single tentacle caught her by the foot . . . it snaked once around her ankle, tripping her flat on her face on the floor of the basement, and instantly sent a crippling shock of electricity coursing through her.

_PPHHZZZBBZZZTT._

_"AaaaUUGHH!" _Calhoun let out a ragged scream of pain as every muscle in her body seemed to go rigid at once, her knees and elbows bending as her limbs locked helplessly in place. For five full seconds that seemed to last a lifetime, she lay paralyzed on the concrete floor, writhing in agony . . . then, the temporary supply of its power evidently exhausted, the tentacle loosened from her ankle, and the shock subsided.

Her chest heaving breathlessly, Calhoun immediately wrenched herself onto her hands and knees - ignoring the ripples of screaming protest it sent through her still-stunned system - and threw the hatch doors of the code room shut. The plastic console clicked and spun ninety degrees, locking the entrance once more, and at last the horrific shrieking from within the chamber fell silent.

Calhoun wheezed out a haggard gasp, collapsing to her back for a moment on the cool, damp cement floor, clutching her chest with one hand as she struggled to force regular breaths back into lungs. She had smacked her face on the floor when the tentacle had tripped her, and a small trickle of a blood was running from her left nostril. She smeared it away with the back of her hand, trembling slightly, and rolled onto her side to look at Felix.

He was still lying limply on his back where she'd dropped him when she fell, and he looked as if he'd fallen unconscious. His eyes were squeezed shut, his face frozen in a silent cringe of pain . . . his gloves, shirt, face, and the brim of his cap were singed, and every inch of exposed skin on his arms was covered with angry red electrical burns.

Refusing to let herself crumble into the fit of emotion that was thickening in her throat, Calhoun sniffed loudly and staggered to her feet. She picked up her husband, cradling him tenderly and carefully in her arms, and began ambling as quickly as she could toward the basement stairs. Her limbs were still half numb and wobbly from the electric shock, and she limped slightly on her left foot as she went.

She had just taken her first shaking step up the staircase when a sound like a small, thundering explosion shook the Niceland Apartment building overhead.

- 0 - 0 - 0 -0 -

Mike and Vanellope heard the shocked, distant screams of the Sugar Rush racers and citizens before they saw them. The anxious characters must have huddled themselves directly outside the entrance to their game, because seconds before Ralph went charging through the gate, they caught wind of the approaching menace and scattered out of his way en masse, parting to either side like flocks of brightly-colored sheep just as he burst into Game Central Station.

Vanellope's kart followed hot on his heels, roaring through the transit too quickly for them to clearly make out how many startled faces they raced past. They cut straight across the station and tailed Ralph through the Fix-It Felix Jr. gate, Vanellope braking uneasily and swerving as he suddenly slowed down upon entering the anteroom.

"I _knew it!" _Mike cried, her grip tightening unconsciously on the spoiler and her heart sinking with dread. "The virus is calling him back to protect itself from Felix and Calhoun! They must be fighting it in the code room right now!"

"But how is he going to get inside? Now that he can't glitch, there's no _way _he'll be able to fit through the tu - "

But even as Vanellope was speaking, Ralph skidded to an abrupt halt on the platform, half-slamming into the wall around the tunnel entrance and taking no notice of it . . . he hesitated a split second, as if summoning all his energy together, and then - in a spastic, shuddering distortion of pixels and light so wretched, it was almost physically painful to witness - glitched away into Fix-It Felix Jr.

Mike's jaw dropped in dismay, but Vanellope immediately punched her foot down on the gas again and sped straight into the tunnel after him, bucking wildly up the stairs of the platform and then plunging forward into the darkness.

"That was a _bad one . . . _that glitch did a number on him, I can _tell!_" Vanellope shouted fiercely over the roar of the engine resonating in the narrow brick passage, the kart bumping roughly over the sleepers of the train tracks. "He _can't _have many more of those left in him!"

"Let's hope so, Vanellope . . . let's hope so," Mike muttered fearfully as the pale light of the game raced toward them up ahead. "It's the only chance we've _got."_

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_BOOOOOMMM! BOOOOOOMMM!_

_BOOOOOMMM!_

The walls on either side of Calhoun were creaking back and forth like sails in a hurricane as she ran for all she was worth down the hallway, clutching Felix's limp body desperately to her chest and keeping her gaze trained straight ahead on the distant front door of the apartment building. The ceiling overhead was crumbling to pieces, raining down gales of dust and fist-sized chunks of plaster that glanced off her head and shoulders.

_Keep running, keep running, keep running . . . ._

A door on her right side suddenly splintered to pieces as the frame around it collapsed. An enormous section of wall crashed down on the floor in front of her . . . she suppressed a scream of alarm and stumbled over it, nearly losing her footing on the jagged edges of upbraided two-by-fours.

All around her were the constant, deafening sounds of crashing and crushing and splitting and cracking, the very air around her vibrating as the precarious structure of the Niceland Apartment building groaned and sagged ever further toward the edge of collapse, literally on the verge of crumbling to pieces on top of her.

Finally, Calhoun reached the end of the main hallway and skidded to a halt, lifting her right leg and delivering a single, savage kick to the splintering front door. She barely had any strength remaining, but the door was already so full of cracks that it burst apart into fragments under the heel of her foot. She sprinted out of the building, across the patio, and onto the front lawn . . . seconds later, the first three floors of the structure finally gave way and collapsed.

The sound of the towering apartment building imploding in on itself was so loud that for a few seconds after it happened, Calhoun went momentarily deaf and could hear nothing except a faint, high pitched ringing noise. The blast of air from the collapsing structure sent her stumbling forward to her hands and knees, somersaulting over Felix and tumbling to her back on the grass.

Her energy utterly spent, her vision foggy and her head fuzzy with the muted ring in her ears, Calhoun groaned as she slowly rolled onto her stomach and looked back toward the incredible, stories-high mound of ruin now filling the center of the game.

The Nicelanders were nowhere to be seen. Calhoun was briefly struck cold by the horrible thought that they might have been caught in the collapse . . . but a glance toward the empty train station relieved her with the certainty that they had probably fled to Game Central Station long ago.

Any trace of relief she felt evaporated the next instant, however, when she turned back to look once more at the remains of the building.

There, in the middle of the wreckage near the place where the front entrance had recently stood, on top of a heap of bricks and rubble nearly forty feet high, was a concrete slab half the size of a truck . . . and as Calhoun looked at it, it was beginning to move.

The slab shifted, slid a few feet down the heap, sending a small avalanche of debris spilling down . . . and then, as swiftly and easily as if it were a sheet of Styrofoam instead of solid stone, two gargantuan hands pushed it up from beneath and tossed it aside with an achingly loud _THUD. _Calhoun watched, her hearing gradually returning and her face sinking in a look of pure, defeated exhaustion, as Ralph emerged from the ruins of the building he'd just leveled, bristled himself once like an animal to shake the dust and loose debris from his shoulders, and slid calmly down the side of the brick heap until his enormous feet landed flat on the grass below, not fifty yards from where she and Felix lie collapsed and helpless on the grass.

Calhoun closed her eyes and let out a long, listless exhale. She barely even had enough energy left to be afraid.

When she looked up again, Ralph was standing up straight in front of the destroyed building . . . and his empty, glowing eyes stared quietly back at her.

He began to walk calmly towards her across the grass, his footsteps shaking the ground like tremors of a distant earthquake.

As she was struggling to muster the strength to rise to her feet, Calhoun suddenly realized that the faint rumbling noise which she'd first heard a few seconds ago, but had been too distracted to pay any attention to, was growing steadily louder and closer . . . and the next moment, she whirled around in alarm as the roar of a particularly familiar go-kart came skidding to an abrupt halt a few yards behind her.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Calhoun, Felix . . . stay _back!"_

Without waiting for the stunned, battered-looking sergeant to answer, Mike flung herself down from Vanellope's kart the moment it had ground to complete halt in the grass, her brush already gripped firmly in hand. Her heart pounding and her knees trembling - but her face etched in a glare of pure, surrendering determination - she moved to stand in front of the others, squaring herself straight at Ralph as he continued slowly toward them, his stride blood-chillingly calm and deliberate.

On the grass behind her, Felix suddenly gasped as if he'd been abruptly woken up from some kind of trance. He coughed haggardly and tried to sit up, and his wife immediately rushed to his side.

_"Felix! _Oh, Felix, I . . . I thought you were . . ."

Calhoun trailed off, her voice choking uncharacteristically with emotion, as Felix braced himself on her arms and slowly rose to his feet. They exchanged a series of breathless inquiries and exclamations that fell almost mutely on Mike's ears. Vanellope had joined them as well, and the moment all of three of them abruptly found themselves standing together behind her, she felt their eyes pressing against her back in unison.

There was a moment of stunned, almost ironically peaceful silence between the four of them as they watched the giant figure that had once been their friend lumbering toward them with heartbreaking emptiness behind his eyes.

Mike tightened her two-handed grip on the handle of her paintbrush, the bristles raised and pointed defensively toward Ralph . . . and for a moment, the corner of her mouth almost turned up in a small, devastated smile when she remembered that she had been standing in that exact same position the first time she'd ever laid eyes on him, that rainy night when he'd come knocking shyly on her front door.

Then, just as she was about to open her mouth to blurt out the discovery she and Vanellope had made about Ralph's glitch . . . something stopped her.

"I . . . I couldn't do it," Felix's small, shaking voice whispered suddenly into the silence behind her. "I _tried_, but I . . . but I . . . I just couldn't _do it. _I couldn't delete the virus from his code. I'm . . . I'm _sorry._"

Mike froze.

She whirled around to look at Vanellope, and as their eyes met, the last remaining glimmer of hope inside both of them died out in perfect unison. Their final, feeble plan of salvation vanished like a whisper of smoke in the wind.

_The glitches, the paintbrush, their last hope of salvation . . . everything they'd just fought so hard for in Sugar Rush . . . . gone. All at once . . . in one fell swoop . . . none of it mattered anymore. _

_The virus couldn't be deleted. _

_No matter what they did now . . . no matter how long they held out against him, no matter whether they somehow managed to subdue him or trap him or slow him down . . . it wouldn't make any difference._

_Nothing they could do was ever going to bring Ralph back again. _

Felix paused, then sniffed suddenly, and when he spoke again, Mike realized without having to look back that there were tears forming in his eyes.

"Well, I . . . I guess this is it, gang," he said softly, with the smallest hint of a sad, apologetic smile. "I d-don't . . . I don't see any way _out of this one."_

_THUUMM. THUUMM._

Ralph was drawing steadily closer and closer, his footfalls growing louder and heavier with each approaching step. He was now halfway between them and the remains of the building . . . it almost seemed as if the virus were deliberately making him take his time to reach them, in a vengeful attempt to torture them with the horror of anticipation for as long as possible.

"We can run," Calhoun cried suddenly, desperately, as if she didn't really have the slightest faith in her own suggestion. "We . . . w-we still might be able to make it back to the station, if we all - "

"No," Vanellope cut her off, in a voice graver and more solemn than Mike would have believed any child capable of. "No more running. It's time to put this to an _end."_

_THUUMM. THUUMM._

Mike closed her eyes and drew in a long, deep, steadying breath.

_THUUMM. THUUMM._

Mike let the breath out slowly, then turned to look over her shoulder.

"You guys?" she said softly. "I'm . . . I'm sorry for this. I'm sorry for _everything."_

Three pairs of misty, questioning eyes rose to meet her gaze. She looked at each one of them individually . . . then smiled.

"Thanks for trying to rescue me. And . . . thank you . . . for _being my friends."_

Mike turned back . . . steeled her eyes against the quiet, gentle rim of tears that were shining in them, raised her paintbrush . . . and took off running directly towards Ralph.


	44. Chapter 43: You Will Never Be Good

**A/N: **Sweetness Crumps, you guys.

I'm tripping. I'm tripping at the finish line. This chapter was INSANE HARD to make myself write. I don't know what it is, but it's like my steam for finishing this project is just running dangerously low. I promise I'm absolute going to see it through to the end . . . but this is a critical juncture. I could reeeeeaaallly use some good reviewin' love to get me through it.

I've also given up the idea of trying to wrap this up in 45 chapters. It's probably going to land somewhere between 45 and 50.

Hope you like this one, guys . . . it took a lot out of me. Illustration is posted on my dA!

**Disclaimer: **I own none of the copyrighted concepts or characters mentioned herein.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 43: You Will Never Be Good . . . and That's Not Bad_

"MIKE! _WAIT!"_

But Michelangela didn't even glance back at them, and Felix's cry shrank away in a horrified gasp.

Vanellope's heart plunged into the pit of her stomach, she and the Fix-Its watching in paralyzed silence as Mike sprinted across the grass in a beeline toward the devastated wreckage of the Niceland apartment building, her brush gripped defensively in both hands like a melee weapon. The nearer she drew to their approaching adversary, the smaller and more pitifully helpless she seemed in comparison.

If Ralph was even the slightest bit alarmed at seeing Mike suddenly charging straight at him, no visible sign of it flashed across his dead-eyed face. He didn't stop walking, or even adjust the speed of his lumbering gait . . . he simply balled his right hand into a fist and reared it back behind his shoulder as he continued forward, ready to flatten Mike's scrawny body in a single blow the instant she was close enough. They were less than thirty feet apart . . . then twenty . . . then _ten_ . . . .

Vanellope's eyes widened, a helpless cry sticking in her throat as she saw the muscles in Ralph's arm suddenly thicken and coil back in final preparation for the seismic punch . . . and then, at the last instant before he was about to strike, Mike skidded to a stumbling halt directly in front of him, raised the brush over her head, and swung.

_TTSSZZIIING!_

All Vanellope saw was a streak of bright, violet paint snaking from the bristles of Mike's brush as she dove wildly to one side, her hair whipping across her face and hiding her expression from view . . . . the next second, Ralph's fist was hitting the ground with staggering force, and she lost sight of everything for a moment as the very foundations of the game seemed to shake beneath their feet.

_**BBBOOOOMM!**_

The tremor rippled up through Vanellope's legs in a rapid wave, making her stumble and nearly fall to her knees. When she caught her balance and looked up again, Ralph was uprooting huge chunks of sod as he jerked his fist violently out of the ground . . . but Mike was nowhere to be seen.

Every muscle in Vanellope's body seized rigidly with panic. "Wh-where . . . where did she - !?"

"There! Over _there!" _Calhoun cried, pointing around Ralph toward the mountainous ruins of the apartment building behind him.

Vanellope followed the end of Calhoun's arm frantically with her eyes, and in doing so realized that the violet brushstroke was now latched around Ralph's right wrist like a handcuff, and that as he was unsuccessfully trying to shake it off, the tether was pulled taut and streaming back toward the building wreckage . . . . and on the other end of it, running clumsily for all she was worth with the paint line feeding out over her shoulder, was Mike.

It had all happened so quickly that Vanellope and the Fix-Its hadn't moved from their rooted positions on the grass . . . now, they began to hover on bent knees as they exchanged rapid, anxious glances, not knowing whether they should run forward or hang back.

"What is she _doing!?" _Felix demanded incredulously. "We have to stop her before Ralph - !"

_Gggllzzglltch._

A bizarre, electrified sound suddenly crackled through the air nearby, and the three of them jerked their heads toward it with fearful looks of apprehension . . . but the moment she saw the cause of the noise, Vanellope's eyes widened and her face went blank.

Farther away at the corner of her vision, Mike had already dashed all the way back to the edge of the building rubble, her arms still outstretched and the purple paint streak still strung between Ralph and the end of her brush like some kind of surrealistic dog leash . . . but she too was now standing rigidly still and staring at Ralph open-mouthed, whatever plan she'd just been about to execute evidently on pause in her thoughts.

_GGLGLLGGZZTCH._

With each repetition, the intermittent bursts of digital scrambling grew louder, longer, and more strained . . . and with every garbled blip, Ralph's pixels were scattered into increasingly jagged contortions of turquoise light, then fusing together again almost instantaneously in the same position, his gargantuan wrist rematerializing back inside the paint noose too rapidly for him to avoid it.

As they watched him, his brow slowly lowered into a frighteningly dark line that almost resembled a glare of anger. He began to twist and thrash in place, wrenching his arm in every direction with increasing violence and desperation as he failed over and over again to glitch his way out of it. Each time, the distortion of his pixels became faster and weaker, and faster and weaker, until finally . . . with one last useless shudder of binary that rippled once over the surface of his body, then vanished . . . he stopped altogether. With his chest heaving almost imperceptibly and the disembodied, somehow unconscious look of rage darkening on his face, Ralph stood perfectly still for a few seconds and stared at the inescapable tether around his wrist.

"That's it," Vanellope heard herself whispering in amazement. "That was the last bit of my power he had left . . . . he _can't glitch anymore!"_

One reeling instant of stunned silence echoed through the atmosphere of Fix-It Felix Jr. like the report of a gunshot.

Then . . . with a look of wild, senseless hatred so grotesquely contorted that it actually made Vanellope long for his glowing blue eyes to go blank and empty again . . . Ralph whirled around and broke into a full, raging sprint straight toward Michelangela, charging on his feet and knuckles like a gorilla with the ground quaking beneath him.

An jolt of urgency and shock splashed over Vanellope like a wave of cold water, and she felt the steering wheel and pedals of her kart jumping up under her hands and feet before she even realized she'd flung herself into the driver's seat.

"COME ON!" she shouted over the roar of the engine as she punched it fiercely to life. "We've gotta _help!"_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The second Ralph turned and pinned her with a murderous look from his glowing eyes, Mike jerked out of her reverie and bolted the remaining few feet between herself and the edge of the rubble heap that had recently been the Niceland apartment building, scrambling her way up the side of the hazardous mound as quickly as she could with the paintbrush still clutched in both hands.

She didn't stop to look back when the thundering approach of Ralph's footsteps began to tremble the air around her like a colossal, terrifying heartbeat, and she refused to lose her grip on the brush handle or let the paint cord be severed as it began to swing and strain violently with his movements. Her eyes wide and her pulse pounding, Mike climbed to the top of the first outlying hill of bricks and broken wall fragments, instantly fell upon the largest, heaviest boulder of intact concrete within her reach, and looped her end of the paint tether securely around it in one broad, circular stroke. The second the paint was snapped free of its bristles, she turned and dived headlong down the side of the heap . . . just as Ralph collided into it with the force of a runaway locomotive, pounding into the enormous rubble pile with such momentum that he was immediately hidden from view in an explosion of dust and flying building debris.

Mike tumbled painfully head over heels down a rushing avalanche of bricks, squeezing her eyes shut and hugging the brush to her chest for dear life until she rolled to a stop at the bottom, covered in dust and coughing haggardly as she tried to regain her bearings . . . but before she could even stagger back to her feet, the churning roar of a familiar go-kart engine had squealed to a halt beside her, and four hands heaved her up onto the rear hood just before it went racing away again.

Mike sat up and blinked her eyes open to see the pale, battered-looking faces of Felix and Calhoun, crouched precariously beside her on the back of Vanellope's kart as they went speeding toward the trees on the west side of the game.

"No . . . no, _no, _WAIT!" she cried, her voice raising gradually as she realized they were taking her away from Ralph and the building. "Turn around! Take me _back!"_

"There's no _point, _Mike!" Calhoun barked, firmly but miserably, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her once to force Mike to look her in the eye. "No matter how much damage we do or how long we delay him, it's just a matter of time before he - "

But even as the bruised and battered-looking sergeant was speaking, Vanellope suddenly veered the kart around in a sharp one-eighty degree turn that cut her off with a startled yelp, and all at once they were speeding deliberately back toward the remains of the building.

"NO . . . Chickadee's _right!" _Vanellope shot ferociously at them over her shoulder, her cherubic face narrowed in a glower of pure determination. "I don't care what we can or can't do anymore . . . all I know is, I'm _done _running away from this . . . I'd rather go down with the ship than spend the last few days of my life running and hiding! Either we find a way to stop Ralph right here, right _now,_ or this is where I_ bite the big one!"_

Calhoun and Felix exchanged incredulous looks of frustration.

"But . . . what are we going to _do?" _Felix demanded. "If we keep on rushing at him head first like this, you might just get your _wish, _Vanellope . . . what we need is a _plan!"_

"We've already got one!" Mike heard herself blurt out, with twice as much certainty as she actually felt. "Don't you see? Ralph can't _glitch _anymore, and my paintbrush is the only weapon that the virus doesn't have a stolen defense against! If I can get close enough to hit him with enough brushstrokes, I might be able to get him strapped down!"

Calhoun was still shaking her head with an unconvinced look of defeat. "And _then _what? There's still no way to delete the virus from his code! What are we going to . . . keep him trapped here, forever? Find a way to _kill him?"_

Mike opened her mouth, then paused as the words struggled to come. She swallowed, and looked Calhoun straight in the eye.

"I . . . I don't know. I don't know what comes after that. All I know is . . . it's _my _fault that Ralph is like this, and I _can't _give up on him. Even if it _is _impossible . . . even if I _can't _save him in the end . . . I've still got to do everything I possibly can. I've got to _try._"

There was a moment of silence between them, the only sound the continuous rumble of the engine.

"I don't _care_ what happens to us . . . " Vanellope repeated darkly as she slowed the kart to a sputtering crawl twenty yards from the building remains. " . . . I am _not _running away again."

Almost in unison, the four of them turned to look up at the wreckage. Mike felt a pang of resigned fear hollowing in her chest as she shakily climbed down from the kart and planted her feet in the grass. Ralph had worked his way back out of the hill of rubble he'd plunged into and was still struggling to shake off the violet brushstroke, which had held fast to both his wrist and the concrete block she had fixed it to and become hopelessly tangled around his right arm.

If the monstrously altered form of her friend had been frightening before, while conducting himself with an eerie sense of deliberate calmness . . . then the increasingly frenzied and savage anger now evident in his thrashing movements was doubly terrifying.

Mike drew in a slow, steady breath, then let it out again and looked back at the three grim, transfixed figures crouched in the kart. Vanellope caught her eye and nodded with a sharp, determined glare.

"This is it, Chickadee," she said quietly, revving the engine of her kart and shifting her gaze beyond Mike to look at Ralph with a muted, suppressed look of sadness. "It's now, or never . . . time to show us what you and that gimmicky toy are _made of."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_His entire existence was like being underwater._

_Everything . . . the world, himself, his own slow-moving thoughts and the absent, invisible shadows that clouded the surface of his mind like a smog . . . they were all suspended simultaneously outside of and within him, close enough to reach out and touch but having no solid substance to grab onto. _

_His hearing was incredible, but every sound still seemed dull and muffled by the time it reached his brain. Flawless eyesight blazed through his glowing blue orbs . . . yet in his thoughts, every image appeared blurry and foreign. The brunt of every physical contact felt distant and softened, as if there were a layer of thick, invisible foam between his skin and everything he touched. _

_All of his physical senses were heightened and immaculate . . . but his mind was submerged so deep, so utterly drowned in a void of white nothingness, that none of it mattered the slightest bit. Everything was pointless. Everything was sublimely calm . . . even when he felt the features of his face twisting under their own power into the imitation of a furious snarl, it didn't mean anything._

_**Nothing**__ meant anything. He was adrift in a permanent ocean of non-meaning, where everything was calm and quiet and blurry and still._

_It was like being underwater . . . forever._

_Even now, as he was struggling to free himself from the strange, violet-colored cord that was binding his right arm . . . he couldn't really feel its pull, was only vaguely aware of its tightness biting into his wrist. No matter how he fought, he didn't seem able to escape it . . . and yet, he didn't consciously care. _

_Of course he would free himself eventually, and destroy the little creatures still running around him, and then destroy this place that he was in, and then move on and do the same thing everywhere, over and over again, forever. Of course he would . . . it was the reason for his existence._

_But he didn't __**care **__about it. _

_None of the things he knew he must do mattered to him. He would do them, he would let nothing stand in his way of doing them . . . but not because he wanted or needed to. He neither wanted, nor needed anything. He simply __**did**__ - and he watched himself do the things he existed to do with an unconscious disconnection . . . as if from a distance, from some other location far away and outside of his physical self._

_He gave another mighty pull of his arm, and the heavy thing that the cord was attached to finally gave way, and he found himself at liberty of movement once again. He looked around to see where the creatures had gone, and immediately spotted three of them together, not far away from him. They were all crammed inside the same little vehicle that had zoomed around his feet in the previous world he'd gone to destroy . . . and the moment they realized that he saw them, there was a faint roaring sound and the vehicle began to move quickly toward him._

_He slid down to the bottom of the heap he was standing on, keeping his gaze fixed on the approaching creatures and preparing to obliterate them promptly when they came near . . . but suddenly, just as he was raising his hands above his head, he heard a sharp whistling noise, and then something was hitting his arm and wrapping around his left wrist._

_He looked quickly from the corner of his eye and saw that it was another cord, orange-colored this time. Calmly and instinctively, he wrenched his left arm forward, remembering dimly - if his mind could even be said to possess the capacity for true memory - that there usually seemed to be one of the creatures attached to the other end of these colorful lines . . . but instead of whipping a small body through the air as he had done before, he discovered that this time, the other end of the cord was already held fast to something heavy and stationary._

_He allowed himself a longer glance backward, and saw that the cord was now attaching his left wrist to one of the foundational corners of the structure behind him, one of the few sections left standing. He tensed the muscles in his arm and pulled, and after a few seconds the concrete gave way . . . but when he looked back out into the open, the roaring vehicle with its three passengers was gone. He concentrated for a moment and found that though he could no longer see it, he could still hear it . . . it was moving in a very broad loop around him, close to the other edge of the world, and was gradually circling back from the other side._

_He moved a few paces further out from the wreckage, waited patiently for the right moment, then delivered a shuddering, calculated blow to the ground at the exact instant before the little vehicle wheeled back into sight out of the trees off to his left._

_A thick crack split through the ground precisely as he'd ordained it, and the vehicle collided with it at full speed, bucking off its three passengers. The front end of the little machine crumpled uselessly, and the creatures landed in a sprawling heap just a couple dozen yards away from him._

_He had just taken his first brisk step toward them when he was hit, yet again, by one of the irritating cords . . . this one shot from behind and snaked around him in a boomerang-shaped arch, snapping tight over his chest and then yanking him several steps back like the band of a slingshot. He pulled instinctively against it and found that despite the raw strength of his protesting force, this bind wouldn't budge from its anchors._

_He quickly raised his right arm - but before he could bring it down again to try and earthquake loose the remaining foundations of the structure, another cord had snapped securely around his fist and been anchored down as well._

_After that, everything suddenly began happening very fast._

_The next thing he knew, he was being hit in the chest with a blast of scorching heat that was similar to, but much smaller and less intense than the blinding green beam that he vaguely remembered being shot with once before. He jerked his head around and saw one of the creatures . . . the tallest one, with the armored body and pale yellow hair . . . retreating from him. The barrel of the weapon in its hand was still smoking, and it was limping heavily as it tried to run . . . had he not been impeded by the cords, he would have been able to catch it in seconds. _

_Though he felt almost nothing from the attack, he reared back with his remaining free fist to retaliate . . . and it was instantly struck from behind with another cord._

_And then, the moment both of his arms were immobilized, more cords were latching onto him every few seconds, snaking around from the left and right and left and right over and over again, looping around his chest, his neck, his stomach, his shoulders . . . all of them fastened to various anchors of the building wreckage close behind him and trapping him in place like a bird in a net. He tried several times to glitch out of the binds, but it was futile . . . he succeeded only in bringing a sudden, brief spell of weakness upon himself that made his body feel frail and ineffective. _

_He began pulling forward with all his might, the cords creaking and straining and digging into his limbs . . . his feet ground deep grooves in the soft turf, and a sparse few of the bonds gave way from their stations, but not enough to set him free._

_Every time he began to turn back to try and locate the unseen attacker behind him, one of the other three creatures would assault him from the front and draw his attention back. Usually it was the tall one with its small arsenal of largely ineffective weapons . . . but every third instance or so, it was one of the other two small creatures veering near him, hurling small rocks or fragments of brick up at his face and then darting out of the impeded path of his swinging fists just in time to avoid being grazed. _

_The increasingly irritating exchange continued for five surreal, disorienting minutes . . . and then, the next thing he knew, his arms were so restrained with cords that he couldn't move them at all._

_- _0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Mike had never breathed so hard in her life.

Every gasping inhale raked through her lungs like fire, and yet she couldn't slow down. Her chest heaved harder and faster every second as she made her way continually back and forth over the treacherous heaps of the wreckage, climbing and leaping and scrambling and falling, catching her feet and knees over and over on jagged edges of brick and stone . . . but she couldn't stop. Not yet.

Ralph was standing on the ground less than ten feet away from the foot of the rubble, his arms and body now tethered to the rise of building ruins behind him by a veritable rainbow of brushstrokes, taut and quivering tenuously on their concrete anchors as he strained against them.

Beyond him, running interference for her attacks and distracting him every time she rose up out of the wreckage to swing her brush, she could see Calhoun and Felix and Vanellope, frightened and panting and exhausted . . . and beyond them, the wreck of Vanellope's go-kart, crashed in the deep trench Ralph's fist had split through the ground. In order to draw Ralph's attention away from her while he had still maintained partial mobility, it had been necessary for the three of them to repeatedly run within immediate striking distance of his arms, narrowly escaping countless deadly blows. Calhoun had long since exhausted both the charge of her laser pistol and the contents of her utility belt.

When she finally saw that Ralph was no longer able to move his arms, Mike stumbled to a breathless halt in the middle of the wreckage and darted her eyes back and forth. The walls and cornerstones to which she'd anchored the brushstrokes were managing to hold against Ralph's monstrous strength . . . but only just. Two of them had already given way, and the rest creaked and bowed dangerously as if ready to split from their foundations any second. Her spirits plummeted, sweat trickling down her temples as she narrowed her eyes at the torn-up ground near Ralph's feet.

_It was no good . . . the remains of the building just weren't strong enough to hold him for long._

_She had to get closer. She had to hit him with one final stroke, one tether that he wouldn't be able to break._

Not allowing herself a single instant of hesitation to contemplate what she was about to do, Mike set her jaw, tightened her aching knuckles once more around the wooden brush handle, and took off at a half-tripping run down the mound of rubble.

Dodging around the maze of bowstring-tight paint tethers stretched out behind him, Mike snaked nimbly down to the ground just a few feet beside Ralph, and without pausing, shot a streak of azure paint around his left shin. He immediately forgot about the others and jerked his head down to look at her, his glowing eyes and mouth bared wide in a hideous, but silent snarl of rage . . . the brushstrokes quivered and creaked as he struggled furiously against them, but try as he might, he couldn't bring his fists crashing down on her.

Her body all but numb with fear and her heart pounding so fast it had almost evolved into a ceaseless hum, Mike forced herself to keep her head down and her eyes fixed on the target as she began running in a tight, continuous circle around Ralph, binding his legs tighter and tighter together with the brushstroke.

In the corner of her eye, she saw Vanellope and the Fix-Its regrouping on Ralph's other side, watching her with crossed looks of both fear and something that almost might have been hope.

Around and around and around she went . . . _a little more, just a little more . . . ._

"Mike, that's _enough! _Get away from there!" she heard Felix's voice ringing out anxiously nearby . . . but she stubbornly ignored him, feeding out more and more of the brushstroke without slowing down.

_**Have**__ to be sure he can't break loose . . . just a __**little **__more . . ._

Then, suddenly, like an instantaneous clap of thunder splitting the air in the distance, she heard it.

_CCCKKKRRRAACCKK._

"MIKE! _RUN!" _Vanellope screamed.

She skidded to a stop in front of Ralph, hanging backwards from the paint tether and nearly losing her balance, just in time to look up and catch a fleeting glimpse of the concrete foundation corner that had finally cracked and slid forward before Ralph's left arm was suddenly jerking toward her.

Too breathless and reeling to even cry out, Mike felt the paintbrush fall from her hands as she blindly dove out of the way.

_SSTTRRRPPRING!_

She landed face first in the grass just as the air was split, not with the deafening crash of Ralph's fist that she'd been expecting, but instead, a sharp, shuddering _twang, _like a loose rope being snapped violently taut again. She felt multiple hands hauling her to her feet, and stumbled back to stand beside Calhoun, Felix and Vanellope as the four of them looked back up at Ralph in unison.

He hadn't broken free . . . but he had loosened enough of the brushstrokes from their anchors that his left arm had advanced and was straining against its bonds further forward than his right, so that his clenched fist hung just a few feet above where Mike's head would have been . . . but it was not this development that made her eyes go wide and her chest seize suddenly with panic.

The instant she had dropped the brush, the brushstroke around his legs had gone limp and disintegrated into cascades of azure paint that stained his tattered overalls, but left his legs free once more . . . and the instant his legs were free, Ralph lifted his right foot and brought it stomping straight down on the paintbrush lying helplessly on the grass in front of him.

THUUD.

_SSNAP._

The sound of the thick, sturdy wooden handle of her Battle-strokes brush breaking in two beneath the seismic pressure of Ralph's heel was so sharp and violent it made Mike's teeth shudder . . . but she had no time to mourn the loss of her weapon before another terrifying noise of creaking tethers and grating concrete seized her attention. She reflexively spread her arms in front of Vanellope and the others and pushed them further back, away from the towering giant now leaning toward them at a near forty-five degree angle.

His strength and rage evidently renewed, Ralph was straining so fiercely against the brushstrokes that they bit deep, ugly welts into the meat of his arms, his left fist struggling so hard that it trembled. His glowing eyes and teeth were grit into an animalistic, frighteningly silent snarl, the building fragments to which he was tethered groaning louder and louder as they weakened by the second.

Mike's heartbeat thudded chokingly in the back of her throat as she and the others stood rooted to the spot, staring up at Ralph in stunned silence.

Even if they'd been able to summon the necessary strength and willpower to turn and run . . . even if, in their hopelessly spent condition, they'd been able to make it even as far as the Fix-It Felix Jr. exit . . . it wouldn't have made any difference. Any efforts to escape now seemed utterly and inarguably pointless. At any moment, Ralph was going to break free . . . he would be upon them in seconds . . . and they no longer had even a single weapon with which to defend themselves.

They had failed.

_She _had failed them.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_The four creatures were huddled in front of him now, frozen in place and gaping up at him as he struggled against his increasingly tenuous bonds. _

_Bit by bit, fraction by fraction . . . any second now . . . he kept his eyes trained firmly on them as he advanced gradually forward, his left fist pushing so hard against the cords that it would be impossible to hold back its momentum as soon as they finally gave way._

_He realized abruptly that one of the shorter creature's mouths had begun to move rhythmically, and beneath the constant straining of the cords, he heard the soft, garbled sounds that must have been it's voice . . . but the noises that the tiny, mostly-blue figure was saying had no meaning to him. No sounds had any meaning to him . . . they ran together in his ears as one muffled, inflectionless drone._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"This is my fault," Mike heard Felix suddenly muttering beside her. "If only I'd been able to remove the virus from his code . . . "

"Shut up_, _sweetheart. Just . . . _shut up,_" Calhoun growled softly, dropping down to her knees and pulling her husband into her arms. Already, the initial shock of terror at realizing the abrupt inevitability of their doom seemed to have eclipsed the four of them, and been replaced by an almost calm sense of acceptance . . . perhaps because they were simply too exhausted, both physically and emotionally, to fight back any longer.

Vanellope's fingers were fisting in the hem of her smock, staring up at Ralph with gleaming rims of tears slowly forming in her eyes. Mike glanced down at her, gently laying her hand on the side of her head and holding her closer to her side.

"If . . . if there was just some way to _reach him . . . _some way to get to the Ralph on the _inside . . . " _Vanellope whispered hopelessly, not really trying to make herself heard. " . . . some way to . . . to make him remember _who he is . . ."_

Mike . . . who'd just opened her mouth to futilely try and say something that might be even remotely comforting to the little girl . . . instantly froze, the unformed words dying abruptly in her throat.

All at once, she couldn't hear the frightening strain of the paint cords or the gradually failing creak of the building foundations.

She couldn't hear Calhoun and Felix's soft, muted voices as they whispered their last words of love to one another.

The only thing she could hear were Vanellope's last four words, echoing hollowly in her ears as her eyes slowly widened unseeingly off into space.

_Remember who he is . . . ._

_Remember who he is . . . ._

_Remember __**who he is **__. . . ._

And then, all in one rushing instant, not only could Mike no longer hear any of the things around her . . . she couldn't see them, either. She had been transported completely back to a moment in time that felt as if it had happened more than a lifetime ago, but in reality had only been a few days earlier. She watched it playing out before her in her minds' eye, as clear and real and tangible as if she were living it all over again . . .

_She was no longer standing in the grass amidst the devastated remains of Fix-It Felix Jr. . . . she was standing somewhere dim and quiet, somewhere small and warm and completely peaceful. There was a ceiling over her head, and four familiar, humble walls surrounding her. _

_She could practically feel the rough, worn grain of the wooden floorboards under her feet, she could almost smell the comforting muskiness in the air . . . and there_, _sitting on the other side of the small room, next to a large, rustic bed, was . . . _

_. . . her. _

_She, herself . . . and sitting beside her, with his back to the wall and his eyes closed in a troubled expression that was neither fully asleep nor fully awake . . . was Ralph. The real Ralph . . . the kind and sweet and simple person that he used to be, the Ralph she was afraid she would never see again._

_She was wearing a forest-green knit sweater that was hopelessly too large for her, and she was curled up in Ralph's lap with her hands cupped anxiously around his face as they exchanged soft, muttering words with one another, his responses to her questions less than half-conscious._

"_What . . . what was that you were saying, Ralph?"_

"_Hhn?"_

"_Those words . . . I'm . . . I'm bad, and that's good . . . ?"_

"_Hh . . . huy will . . . never be good . . ."_

"_Right. What is that?"_

"_Hit's . . . nnm . . . mbad guy . . . Bad Guy Aff'rmurtion."_

"_Bad Guy . . . Affirmation?"_

"_Mm-hmmm . . . s'spose to say it when . . . hn need . . . confid'nce. Hr'minds me who . . . who . . ."_

"_Reminds you of what? Reminds you of __**what**__, Ralph?"_

"_R'minds me . . . who . . . I am."_

_Reminds me who I am._

_**Remember who he is **__. . . ._

Then, in an instantaneous swirl of color and sound, the ravaged landscape of Fix-It Felix Jr. and the defeated forms of her friends reappeared around her, and Mike blinked as she heard herself whisper hollowly out loud . . .

"_Bad Guy Affirmation."_

Vanellope paused, then looked up at her, a glint of curiosity momentarily replacing the shine of unshed tears.

" . . . what?"

"Bad Guy Affirmation," Mike repeated softly, as if it were the single greatest revelation that had ever come to her in her life . . . then again, and again, her voice growing louder and more jubilant with each repetition; "Bad Guy Affirmation . . . _Bad Guy Affirmation, BAD GUY AFFIRMATION!"_

Something invisible seized hold of her, and she no longer felt any fear. She broke away from Vanellope and the Fix-Its without looking back at them and darted straight up under Ralph's face, tilting her head back to stare him in the eye.

She opened her mouth, drew in a deep, frenzied, trembling breath, and shouted . . .

"I'M BAD . . . AND THAT'S _GOOD!"_

- 0 - 0 - 0 -0 -

_Further . . . further . . . harder, and harder he struggled, the tethers that held him growing weaker each instant, ignoring the garbled, nonsensical murmurings that came from the inconsequential creatures cowering before him . . ._

_. . . until suddenly, without warning, one of them . . . the one in white . . . abruptly came straight up to him and said something that almost pierced through the haze of incomprehensibility. It spoke . . . and for reasons he couldn't begin to fathom . . . its muffled voice actually mattered to him somehow._

"_MMMMBAA . . . NNNAAD HHHNNAAAD."_

_For one fleeting instant, he almost stopped straining against the bonds . . . but the overwhelming, pointlessly destructive purpose of his existence quickly blurred him back into oblivion, and he continued struggling._

_But then, the creature spoke a second time . . . and the sounds were even clearer than before._

"_NNHHY WILLL HNNNEVER EEE NNGGOOD, UN HHNADS NOD HHRRRAD."_

_It paused to take a breath . . . . and he realized, abruptly, that it was not an it._

_It was a __**she**__._

_The instant this revelation seeped into his mind, it was as if the entire ocean of meaningless that he had believed to be the beginning and end of all things had been cosmically turned upside down . . . and he was no longer floating, but falling._

_His body began to strain even harder again its bonds, as if his limbs themselves were becoming frantic and crazed beyond his own control. He didn't know why, but all of a sudden it was direly, unutterably important that he break free immediately. _

_The creature . . . __**she **__. . . shouted again . . . and this time, he felt as if he were not only falling, but falling __**towards **__something. _

"_THERE'S NO ONE I'D RATHER BE, THAN ME!"_

_Words._

_They were . . . words. Not sounds, __**words**__._

_And they meant something._

_**She **__meant something._

_Then, all at once, it wasn't only the creature in white who was shouting at him . . . all four of them were shouting in chorus, drawing up close to him and looking straight up into his face with their voices echoing and chiming in tandem with one another . . . . and all at once, they were no longer amorphous creatures in his eyes, but living, thinking beings with features and expressions and familiarity. _

_The smallest one of them . . . another she, a she with dark hair and enormous eyes and a look on her face that made him feel as if he were suddenly falling twice as fast as before toward whatever it was that waited so far beneath him . . . cried out in a voice higher and sharper than the she in white, and it spurred the already hysterical thrashing of his autonomous limbs to a fevered pitch. _

"_I'm bad, and that's good!"_

_Then the third she . . . the one with armor and bruises and an unreadable gleam of emotion on her hard-edged face . . ._

"_I will never be good, and that's not bad!"_

_Then the he, the second-smallest figure clothed in blue, with an almost tangible warmth emanating from his stare . . ._

"_There's no one I'd rather be than ME!"_

_Something inside his body screamed savagely at him, ordering him over and over to break free immediately and kill them all before they could say the horrible, meaning-laden words again . . . but even as the inner voice tried futilely to overpower their influence, they were already repeating the phrases again in such rapid order that he could scarcely tell when one of them stopped and another began._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"It's working!" Vanellope cried, tears of utter disbelief rolling down her cheeks as she watched the expressions - _real, honest expressions _- on Ralph's face changing before their eyes, from furious to curious to confused to despairing to furious again; "It's actually _working! _Keep going!"

"I'm bad, and that's _good!" _Calhoun shouted, her voice raspy and choked with suppressed emotion.

"I will never be good, and that's not bad!" Felix cried, his own eyes beginning to shine.

"THERE'S NO ONE I'D RATHER BE, THAN _ME!" _Vanellope finished, raising her hoarse, weakening voice as loud as she possibly could.

The instant after she'd spoken, Ralph's glowing eyes twisted into a glare of rage more horrible than any they'd yet seen . . . with a grueling, violent twist that was almost painful to watch, he wrenched his shoulders forward, and one of the concrete foundations holding back his torso finally gave way with a grating collapse. He instantly jerked another step forward.

"Everybody back! Everybody get _back!" _Calhoun ordered, grabbing Vanellope and Felix by the shoulder and pulling them a safer distance away . . . . but Mike didn't so much as flinch backward.

Instead, she pushed forward the remaining few inches between herself and Ralph . . . reached up . . . and cupped the sides of his enormous face in her hands, staring straight into his glowing eyes.

_SSNNAAP!_

Another brushstroke tore away from it's anchor, and Ralph's trembling fist advanced another few inches. It was hovering directly over Mike . . . . one more broken tether, and it would come crashing down on her at point-blank range.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_When the green-eyed girl in white . . . for she __**was**__ a girl, he now saw, as the meaning of the word gradually crept back into his mind the longer he looked at her . . . reached up and put her hands on his face, he suddenly stopped falling._

_He stopped pulling against his bonds. He stopped struggling. He stopped breathing._

_He hadn't hit the bottom yet . . . the vague, horrifying surface of reality that he now somehow knew was what awaited him at the lowest depth of his plunge back into consciousness . . . but it was within his sight, now, lying not so very far beneath him like a shimmering mirror that reflected everything the virus had fought to keep blurred and beyond his reach._

_In that mirror . . . he saw a reflection of himself._

_Himself . . . as he suddenly realized he had once been._

_The girl looked straight up into his face, and whispered . . . _

"_You're bad, and that's good. You will never be good . . . and that's not bad."_

_He began falling again, plummeting rapidly down the last remaining fathom between the void and reality._

_A single, shining bead of moisture budded in the corner of the girl's eye._

"_There's nothing you have to do . . . . but just be __**you**__."_

_The instant after the soft echo of her voice faded, he reached the mirror beneath him and plunged through it's surface like a stone through the surface of a pond . . . . and at that moment, the last of the cords holding back his raised arm finally broke. _

_His fist went flying uncontrollably down in the strike that it had been struggling so long to deliver . . . and in the split second before he felt his hand make contact with the frail, helpless body of the girl with green eyes . . ._

_. . . he realized that she had a name, and that he knew what it was._

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

She heard the brushstrokes finally giving way . . . Vanellope, Calhoun, and Felix all crying out her in name in a single voice . . . and then, the world itself seemed to come falling down on her from above, and everything went dark.

SSNNAAPP!

"_MIKE!"_

**BBBBBBOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM.**


	45. Chapter 44: Nothing You Have to Do

**A/N: **Wow. I just . . . thank you, thank you all so much for your encouragement and support for this Thing. At the risk of sounding saccharine, I just have to say it . . . you guys really are the best.

So, I apologize for the shortness of this chapter . . . I pretty much sat down and wrote it in one sitting, and decided that I wanted it to stand on its own. Hope it works, and that you guys aren't too irritated with me for wrapping this Thing up too slowly. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

Illustration for this chapter is posted on my dA.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 44: There's Nothing You Have to Do . . . ._

SSNNAAPP!

_"MIKE!"_

**BBBBBBOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM.**

Vanellope's heart stopped.

The moment the final brushstrokes around Ralph's arm had given way and his fist had come plummeting down, she had instinctively leapt forward with her arms outstretched . . . _as if half believing, in a moment of sheer, reactive shock, that there was anything at all she could possibly do to stop it from happening_ . . . but she had halted - freezing in place like a statue with a look of utter, horrified denial darkening her face - when the fist made direct impact with its target in front of their very eyes. Time ground down to a slow, sickening halt, and every detail of the image was burned into Vanellope's sight like the shadows of lightning.

In every previous instance that Ralph had hammered seismic blows into the ground, he had deliberately expended every ounce of his monstrous strength to push continually downward. He had controlled the momentum of his attacks so that at the end of each one, his fist was always buried two knuckles deep into the earth, and whatever unfortunate object had been beneath them was crushed to pieces.

This hit was not like the others before it.

This time, Ralph _hadn't_ been controlling his strength . . . he had been using all of it to fight manically against the restraining paint tethers around his arm, so that when they finally snapped and released him all at once without warning, his fist went flying forward as unstoppably as a bullet from a gun. The result was that when he did hit Michelangela, his punch did not follow through properly like the others and crush her flat between the grass and his knuckles.

_Although, _as Vanellope would be appalled to find herself thinking numbly just a few minutes later . . . _maybe, when all was said and done . . . it would have been better if it __**had**__._

_At least that way . . . she would have been killed almost instantly, with only a few fleeting seconds of conscious pain._

But it didn't . . . and she wasn't.

What happened was worse.

In the split second after the paint cords snapped, Mike had made one last knee-jerk effort to escape, but only managed to make it a half-step and trip backwards before the punch caught up with her. Ralph's fist made contact with the front of her torso, the brunt of the impact shuddering straight into her sternum and slamming her down flat on her back so fast, her fall was untraceable by the naked eye . . . but his hand, instead of following her to the ground, recoiled from the impact and bounced back, so that although Mike's body wasn't crushed by the physical weight of his fist, the entire force from the swing was concentrated into a single vertex directly over her chest, then sent pulsing through her insides like a shock wave.

Ralph staggered back from the impact, and all at once - as if reacting automatically to the fall of their progenitor - the rest of the paint cords went limp and collapsed, spattering Ralph and the rubble behind him with a rainbow of liquid color. The rush of air that rippled out instantaneously from the hit carried with it a miniature sonic boom that deafened Vanellope and the others for several seconds . . . and then, when it subsided, it seemed to take the very atmosphere of Fix-It Felix Jr. with it, leaving them suspended in an unreal vacuum of shock and speechless horror. Calhoun and Felix were out of sight behind her - but from the depth of the hollow silence that permeated the game in the wake of the blow, Vanellope knew, without having to look, that their faces were twisted into aghast mirrors of her own.

The tears that had been continually trickling from her eyes for the past several minutes abruptly stopped, as if her body itself was too shocked to accept or emotionally register what she'd just seen. For a space of seconds that seemed to last an eternity, Vanellope just stood rooted in place and stared - with her arms still extended uselessly forward - at the limp form of Mike's body on the grass. She barely even noticed when Ralph began blinking excessively and staring down at his own hands behind her.

Slowly, unconsciously, Vanellope began to shake her head back and forth . . . and moment later, she realized that she was muttering out loud to herself almost calmly, as if trying to make the unbearable scene in front of her go away by simply denying that it was real.

"No. No. Just . . . _no. _No, no, no no no no_ no . . . . "_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_A single, shining bead of moisture budded in the girl's eye._

_"There's nothing you have to do . . . but just be __**you**__."_

_The instant the soft echo of her voice faded, he reached the mirror beneath him and plunged through it's surface like a stone through the surface of a pond . . . . and at that moment, the last of the cords holding back his raised arm finally broke. _

_His fist went flying uncontrollably down in the strike that it had been struggling so long to deliver . . . and in the split second before he felt his hand make contact with the frail, helpless body of the girl with green eyes . . . he realized that she had a name, and that he knew what it was._

"Mike."

The word escaped his lips in a whisper so low that it would never have been heard by anyone other than him . . . but the moment he said it - said it aloud, in the cold rawness of reality, with his own physical mouth - it was as if his entire world was burst apart at the seams. The last remaining traces of the calmness and the blurred edges of the underwater nothingness were instantly, violently ripped away, and for a few fleeting seconds he was paralyzed by the agonizing, overwhelming sensations of reality.

All at once, without a moment's transition from nothing to _everything_, he could _feel_ again . . . the grass and tiny bits of rubble beneath his feet, the stiff tackiness of paint drying on his skin, aches and burns and twinges of pain from dozens of points on his body at once, the worst of which was the ceaseless throb of his overall strap, sunk deep in the flesh of his right shoulder.

All at once, he could see and hear and smell and taste the palpable veil of horror hanging in the air . . . after what felt like a lifetime of immutable sleep and perpetual, meaningless dreaming, he was awake again.

He was _alive _again.

_. . . . Ralph._

_Wreck-It Ralph. __**That's**__ what my name is._

_That's who I __**am**__._

For a few more dazed, blissfully disoriented seconds, this was as far as his mind and consciousness emerged, and he stood calmly on the grass . . . blinking down at his own hands, wondering where he was and what on earth was going on . . . .

. . . and then, like a punch to the gut . . . . they hit.

_The memories._

As Ralph stared down at his hands, he suddenly realized that they were beginning to tremble. His brow was narrowing slowly, his lips parting further and further until his face was frozen in a silent, disbelieving grimace of abject revulsion. He felt lightheaded. He felt as if the relentless, horrifying parade memories bombarding his mind one by one were going to make him crumple to the ground and be physically ill at any second . . . but they didn't. Instead, they just held him trapped in place - helplessly captive - as he relived, in one instantaneous succession of images and sounds, every moment that had transpired since he'd first drawn the virus out of Michelangela's body and into his own.

_First was the sensation of stretching . . . of the third-floor room of Mike's house shrinking around him, his clothes splitting seams and creaking in protest and cinching painfully into his limbs . . . and then, Mike staring up at him, shrinking back from him in terror as he towered unfeelingly over her . . . her house breaking to bits beneath his fists . . . Vanellope and Felix and Calhoun, scattering out from under his feet in the pouring rain . . . ._

_Game Central Station, the Hero's Duty soldiers scrambling around him in attack formation, the scorch of the laser blast, the sounds of armor crumpling . . . . Sugar Rush, the racers and candy citizens fleeing from him in every direction, their karts and stands and buildings obliterated effortlessly in his hands . . . Vanellope shouting at him from behind, and he . . . turning around to look down at her . . . raising his fist . . . and . . . and . . . ._

As the memory of himself blankly, emotionlessly trying to murder his best friend was seared like a brand into his mind, Ralph's stomach gave a sickened lurch, and he nearly collapsed to one knee . . . but the stream of images rushed mercilessly onward, indifferent to his incredulity and grief.

_Mike and Vanellope together on her kart, squealing tires and splashes of color and glitching__. . . always, forever __**glitching **__. . ._ _and then, Fix-It Felix Jr., and the apartment building, his fists crumbling it into rubble bit by bit, as if in a cruel, mocking parody of his former life in the game . . . Calhoun and Felix and Vanellope again, running in every direction and narrowly escaping death at his hands countless times while brushstrokes wrapped around him one by one, until at last he could no longer move . . ._

_. . . and then . . . I'm bad, and that's good . . . I will never be good, and that's not bad . . ._

_All around him familiar voices and familiar faces, pulling him further and further out of the nothingness until all at once her name blazed in his mind, wrenching him across the final barrier back into reality . . . _

_"Mike," _Ralph whispered to himself, painfully pulling away from the barrage of terrible memories and looking up, forcing himself back into the present ruins of Fix-It Felix Jr. "Mike . . . _MIKE, _where is - !?"

He looked down at the four familiar figures huddled on grass in front of him . . . and three of the pale, cloudy-eyed faces looked back.

The fourth . . . didn't.

For another moment, Ralph stood where he was and stared.

Vanellope, Felix and Calhoun were kneeling together in a circle, looking up at him as if almost completely unsurprised to see that he was suddenly himself again . . . either unsurprised, or too consumed with another emotion to express any happiness at his return. And there . . . lying still and supine on the ground between them, her head rolled back and her hair fanned over the grass, her limbs splayed and bent up awkwardly around her crippled body, was . . .

_. . . was . . . ._

His body numb to the ends of his fingers and his face transfixed in disbelieving emptiness, Ralph slowly walked forward until he was standing directly over Michelangela . . . then dropped to his knees. Vanellope and the others said nothing, but silently stood up and drew back a few feet, holding each other and watching wretchedly, as if they knew what was coming but wouldn't allow themselves to look away.

For a moment, Ralph briefly felt as if he'd been plunged back into the unconsciousness of the virus's control, because the entire world seemed to have gone silent and intangible. Moving with dream-like slowness, he leaned forward over Mike and tried to reach out to her, but wasn't able to bring himself to touch her. His hands hovered above her body, trembling, as he stared speechlessly down at her pale face.

Mike's eyes were closed and her expression frozen . . . but not in the peaceful stillness of either death or unconsciousness. She was alive . . . and she was _awake . . . _but she was cut off from all thought and reality by a vice of pain that made her eyelids flutter without opening, her teeth bare in a paralyzed grimace, and intermittent spasms ripple through her bent, rigid limbs. Her chest heaved unevenly in the shallowest rhythm of breath imaginable, and a single line of vivid crimson trickled from the corner of her open mouth.

As he knelt over her and stared down, unblinkingly, at the indescribable pain gripping her like an invisible fist before his eyes - _like __**his **__fist . . . his own monstrous, ugly fist that had brought this destruction on her . . . the fist in which he could still feel the ringing echo of the impact against her fragile body, that made him want to sever his own arm so that he would never have to look at it again -_ Ralph gradually became aware of a sharp, suffocating ache piercing the middle of his chest. At first, he thought it was being caused by the absence of his breath, which seemed to have all but stopped of its own accord the moment he'd laid eyes on Mike's broken body . . . but, as his vision abruptly began to blur, he soon realized that it was something else altogether.

Ralph had only cried . . . truly, legitimately _cried, _out loud and for longer than a few seconds . . . once before in his life. It had happened in early September of 1982, only a couple months after Fix-It Felix Jr. had first been plugged in. He'd had a somewhat lonely evening sitting at Tapper's, and had returned to the game to find Felix and the rest of the Nicelanders gathered together on the roof of the building . . . laughing, and passing drinks around, and playing table-tennis. It was the first time they'd openly thrown a party without inviting him, and it was at that moment that he confirmed, once and for all, the fear that had been growing gradually in his mind for weeks, since the moment he'd been plugged in . . . that no one in his game wanted anything whatsoever to do with him - that being a bad guy, meant being alone.

He had gotten misty-eyed at Felix's wedding, and he had come dangerously close to losing it a few days ago in Sugar Rush when Vanellope's glitch was malfunctioning . . . but Ralph had not truly, honestly _cried _since that September night thirty-one years ago.

Until now.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

It might have been due to the sheer, reeling horror of the moment, crystallizing her emotions like a frost turning water to ice . . . or, it might have been as simple as that she'd already cried so much in one day, her ducts weren't able to keep up any longer . . . but whatever the reason, it wasn't until the tears - which glowed with the same soft blue light as his eyes - began rolling down Ralph's face in thick, glistening streaks that Vanellope finally felt her numb shell of incredulity breaking down.

She let out a dry, heaving sob and pulled away from Felix's hands, staggering over to Mike and Ralph and collapsing helplessly to her knees beside them. The Fix-Its followed her slowly, Felix removing his cap as they lowered down on the other side of the rigid body.

Calhoun was gently ghosting her hands over Mike's abdomen and shoulders, her eyes hidden behind the curtain of her bangs.

"Her . . . her insides are . . . are . . . " the sergeant muttered, her voice hollow and choked with more emotion than Vanellope had ever believed her capable of possessing; " . . . she's . . . b-bleeding internally . . . she . . . she can't last more than f-fifteen minutes . . . "

There was a moment of dead silence . . . then, Ralph spoke - sounding faint and far-away, his head still towering above them at his mutated height - and the choked whisper of his voice was so drowned in grief that Vanellope wasn't able to be even fleetingly happy that her friend was in control of his own body again.

_If anything . . . it would have been better if he __**hadn't**__ come back. It would have been better for him to remain captive to the virus, rather than break free of it only to wake up to__. . . to . . . ._

" I . . . I did this," he whispered. "I did this . . . _what have I done? __**I**__ did this . . . "_

Suppressed sobs began to break up his words, his massive shoulders shaking and his stomach jolting in and out as he gasped. Felix quickly tried to cut him off, but was unable to hide the tears evident in his own failing voice.

"N-no . . . _no! _You didn't do this, Ralph. The _virus _did this. You would never . . . y-you would _never . . . "_

Ralph looked up suddenly, his chest heaving and a crazed, frantic look flaring in his eyes.

"FIX HER!" he cried, unexpectedly lunging forward and grabbing Felix's shoulders with both hands, obscuring all but his head completely from view. "_FIX HER! _You can FIX HER, Felix! Use your - !"

"No, Ralph," the handyman gently eased away the gargantuan, trembling hands. "I . . . I can't. The virus stole my powers . . . my hammer can't - "

"TRY! _TRY!" _Ralph shouted raggedly, making all of them flinch. Vanellope bit back a sob.

His eyes glistening, Felix obediently drew his hammer from its holster and administered a single, solemn tap to Mike's shallowly breathing chest.

_Tlink._

The hollow sound rang with heartbreaking finality. Ralph began slowly shaking his head, more tears streaming from his eyes as he breathed harder and faster, staring down at Mike's unchanged form and the dull gleam of the useless hammer. He lifted his monstrously oversized hands up to chest height and glared down at them.

"It's . . . it's because I'm still _like this," _he grit through his glowing teeth, his nostrils flaring and his face darkening in a combination of rage, misery, shame and self-loathing. "The v . . . the _virus . . . _it's still _inside me, _it's still a_live . . . "_

Vanellope fearfully lifted her face to look up at him, her eyes wide and quivering. She unconsciously inched closer to him, putting her hand on his knee. "But . . . no, _no! _No, Ralph, you're _you _again, you're talking to us! You took back control, you - "

"For _how long?" _he demanded miserably. "How long until it takes hold of me again . . . how long until I turn back into that . . . _that . . . ?" _

Ralph trailed off, turning back down to look at Mike . . . and the anger immediately drained from his eyes, leaving nothing but despair and tears of hopelessness. His shoulders shook again, and he buried his face in his hands.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Keeping her face pointed toward the ground so the others wouldn't be able to see the thick pools of tears welling in her eyes, Calhoun silently rose to her feet and turned her back on the others. Her shoulders hunched around her ears and she fought down the audible cries threatening to escape her throat, her hands clenching furiously at her sides.

"No . . . this _can't happen," _she snarled suddenly, squeezing her eyes shut and forcing her grief to channel into impotent anger. "It _CAN'T END THIS WAY."_

She heard a soft shuffle of footsteps, then felt her husband's gloved hand closing around her own. He said nothing, but stood quietly beside her and squeezed her hand as the tears finally forced their way out and rolled down her cheeks.

For one still, empty, cruelly calm moment . . . the longest moment in her waking memory . . . the only sound in Fix-It Felix Jr. was the stifled, muted cries of Ralph and Vanellope, the former falling back with a shuddering _THUMP _to sit flat on the grass - hovering his hand over Mike, just barely stroking his fingertips down the length of her arm - and the latter crawling into his lap to hide her face in his stomach. Mike suddenly drew in a raspy, wheezing breath, her eyes never opening but a horrible twitch wracking her torso. Calhoun squeezed her eyes shut tighter and tried to block out the sound.

_After everything they'd done to try and save her . . . everything __**Ralph **__had done . . . how hard, and long, and hopelessly they'd fought . . . for Mike to die, for __**Ralph**__ to be the one who had unwittingly killed her . . . was pain and tragedy enough for any of them to bear, in and of itself._

_But __**this **__. . . ._

_This standing around, with absolutely nothing left to do but __**wait **__for her to die, while she suffered horribly right in front of them . . . this . . . ._

_This was torture._

_This was __**not**__ bearable._

"I wish . . . " Ralph's voice sounded suddenly in a hoarse, despairing croak; " . . . I wish . . . Litwak was here."

In spite of herself, Calhoun lifted her head and turned to look quizzically at him over her shoulder.

_" . . . what?" _

"I wish Litwak was here, so . . . s-so he could see me like this, and unplug our game. Maybe . . . m-maybe, if I was unplugged . . . the virus would _go with me."_

Calhoun turned away again, her brow furrowing with grief at the bleak surrender in his voice. She hung her head silently for a few seconds . . . .

. . . . and then, with a sudden surge like a bolt of lightning exploding in her mind, her eyes shot open.

She jerked her head up, staring disbelievingly at nothing for a split-second as the agonizing mirage of one last possible hope danced off in the distance . . . Felix started and looked up at her.

" . . . Tammy?" he whispered hollowly. "What . . . what is it?"

Calhoun didn't answer him. She spun on her heel and looked straight at Ralph, her eyes burning wildly into his.

"Ralph," she said quietly, struggling with all her might to keep her voice calm and her breathing steady; " . . . _do you really mean that?"_

The hulking, utterly defeated wrecker returned her gaze emptily, without blinking.

"Yes."

Calhoun swallowed thickly.

"Ralph . . . listen to me. If there was a chance . . . even the _slightest chance . . . _that we _might _be able to get rid of the virus, take back the abilities it stole, and save Michelangela before it's too late . . . you would be willing to take it? Even . . . even if it meant sacrificing yourself? Even if there was no guarantee that you'd survive?"

The look of surrender on Ralph's face had instantly vanished, his eyes wide and flashing with a desperate stare of incredulity.

"What are you saying?" he demanded. "Are you . . . are you saying there's _still a way to save her? ARE YOU!?"_

Suddenly, everyone's eyes were fixed on Calhoun, Vanellope's fingers digging anxiously into the torn, paint-spattered fabric of Ralph's shirt as she stared. She fought to keep her voice from trembling as she continued.

"There's . . . there's still one thing we haven't tried. One thing that might . . . just _might . . . _be able to remove the virus from your code, and return the information it stole."

"What? _WHAT?"_

"It would be a wild shot in the dark, Ralph. There's absolutely no guarantee that it would work at all . . . and it would mean putting your life in certain jeopardy."

"I don't _care! _Whatever it is, Calhoun, I'll do it! I'll do _ANYTHING! What __**is **__it!?"_

Calhoun forced herself to look once more down at Mike . . . closed her eyes, drew in a sharp, steadying breath . . . let it out slowly . . . and lifted her gaze back toward Ralph, her face chiseled in a dark, iron-hard stare.

"We initiate an emergency shutdown of Fix-It Felix Jr. . . . with _you inside the game."_


	46. Chapter 45: But Just Be You

**A/N: **Hi guys . . . sorry again for the shorter chapter and the wait, but . . . HHHHHNNGGGNGGGHH, _*WHEEZE*, _these final installments are becoming _so difficult to write._

Anyway. Illustration posted on my dA, yada yada, hope you enjoy. Seriously gettin' down to the wire now. O_O

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 45: . . . But Just Be You_

For a short moment after Calhoun spoke, a pall of deafening silence settled over them all.

Ralph felt Vanellope's already clenched hands fisting even tighter in the tattered shirt over his abdomen, then a rigid stillness gripping her body.

Felix was staring off into space, his lips parted and the thoughts racing visibly behind his eyes as the implications of the proposition registered one by one with increasing rapidity.

"An _emergency shutdown," _he murmured softly, his voice a mixture of contemplative horror and amazement. "Just like in _Pac-man . . . _I would have to get back down to the code room, initiate the sequence . . . we retreat to the station with Mike before the countdown ends, and Ralph . . . _Ralph . . ."_

" . . . he stays behind," Calhoun finished for him in a tone of trained emotionlessness. "No one knows what happens to a character locked in emergency shutdown . . . but there's a slim chance that when the game goes into hibernation, the virus will be ejected from Ralph's code and unable to survive on its own. Everyone's powers would be restored, and Felix could fix Michelangela before she . . . before it's _too late."_

"And . . . and if it _doesn't work?" _Felix whispered.

Calhoun hung her head and turned aside, hiding her eyes from them.

" . . . then . . . at the very least . . . it would buy the arcade some _time_. We would be able to regroup and come up with another strategy while Ralph and the virus were trapped in the game. At the very least . . . it might give us a chance to try and see to it that what happened to Mike doesn't have to happen to anyone else."

There was another deafening pause.

The tears drying on his blank face, Ralph looked once at each of his friends in turn . . . . his eyes resting, for as long as he could bring himself to bear, on Mike's still shallowly breathing chest and the lines of raw pain etched in her expression . . . . then lifted his head to stare resolutely at Calhoun.

His insides felt like stone.

When he spoke, there wasn't the smallest hint of hesitation in his voice . . . nor a single moment's doubt in his mind.

_"I'll do it."_

Vanellope gave a jolt of shock and whipped her head up to stare at him incredulously with wide, horror-struck eyes.

"WHAT? _NO! __**NO, **_Ralph, absolutely _not!"_

Her shrill cry set a pang of grief tightening in his chest, but Ralph forced himself to harden against it. Lowering his brow into a flat, unyielding line, he gently lifted Vanellope from his lap and placed her back down on the grass, then rose to his feet.

"I have to. It's the _only way, Vanellope."_

"NO! I WON'T _LET YOU!" _she screamed in a furious panic, her eyes darting once back and forth as if desperately searching her brain for an alternate solution. "You don't have to do this, there . . . there _has _to be another way . . . you could . . . y-you could . . . " she paused, then lit up suddenly with a wild gleam of hope; " . . . _YOU _could try to fix her, Ralph! You've still got all the stolen powers, right!? Heal Mike like you healed yourself in the station!"

Ralph froze, his eyes shooting wide and his pulse instantly quickening. This idea honestly had not occurred to him . . . and by the stunned looks on their faces, neither had it occurred to Calhoun or Felix. Without wasting an instant, he dropped frantically back to his knees in front of Mike and reached over her with one hand . . . but the moment his fist was hovering above her broken body, a stab of apprehensive fear stopped him cold.

"But . . . but . . . I don't even know if I _can _use the stolen powers against the virus's will!" he stammered, looking up anxiously at the others. "What if it won't _let_ me heal anyone else? And . . . and her body is so . . . s-so _fragile _right now, what if . . . what if I accidentally h-hit her too _hard, _and I . . . _she_ . . . ?"

He trailed off, unable to even voice the horrible thought out loud.

"Then test it on _me!" _Vanellope commanded, her words half-choked with angry sobs as she jumped up and grabbed hold of his finger, pulling his hand over her. "Test it on this _bump on my head!"_

Ralph cringed guiltily, recollecting once more the vague, but appalling memory of his attempt on Vanellope's life, and recoiling utterly at the very idea of letting his fist touch a single hair on her head again . . . but the fierce, obdurate look in her eyes told him that she wasn't giving him any choice in the matter.

Holding his breath and gripping his right forearm with his other hand to make absolutely certain the contact would be as light and miniscule as physically possible, Ralph swallowed thickly . . . concentrated with all his might on summoning Felix's power . . . and tapped his knuckles once on the crown of Vanellope's head.

She flinched minutely . . . waited a few seconds . . . then squinted one eye open.

Calhoun and Felix stood tense and rigid, staring in desperate hope and expectation. The four of them waited silently for another moment . . .

. . . waited . . . _waited . . ._

. . . and nothing happened.

Calhoun and Felix relaxed, their faces falling in grim disappointment.

Ralph let his breath out slowly, his shoulders slumping in resignation.

" . . . I'm sorry, Vanellope," he said, closing his eyes to shut out the heartbreaking sight of her terrified face looking up at him, her chest beginning to heave with hysterical sobs as the inevitable truth closed in around her; "I'm sorry . . . . _there's no other way."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"There," Felix said quietly, scanning the rubble around him a final time and pointing to the last piece of wreckage that stood between them and their target. " . . . it should be right underneath that one."

His face blank and resolute, Ralph obediently took the enormous slab of wood and concrete ( it looked like a section of floor from the front hallway ) in both hands and tossed it almost effortlessly up out of the pit he'd dug them into in the center of the building ruins. It clattered noisily onto the huge pile of others like it surrounding them.

They were standing in what remained of the basement . . . and sure enough, there in front of them - half covered with dust and loose debris - were the hatch doors sealing the entrance to the Fix-It Felix Jr. code room, the plastic console on the front looking scratched and battered, but still unbroken.

Felix stared at the controller with a pit of hollow finality sinking inside of him. Part of him was still wholly unable - or unwilling - to believe that it was all really happening, that after 31 years together, he and his antagonist . . . _no_ . . . _no, not his antagonist, his **friend** - his_ _**best**__ friend_ . . . were going to be parted, possibly forever . . . and that _he _himself was going to be the one who had to do it.

_It was almost more than he could bear to face, but they had no time to waste on grief and hesitation now . . . it had taken them almost four minutes to dig through to the basement, and every moment they delayed was a moment that Michelangela drew a step closer to the end._

He and Ralph pointedly avoided looking at one another as Felix knelt down numbly in front of the hatch doors . . . _remembering, with a horrible shudder of both guilt and anger, that just a short distance away on the other side of them lay the __**thing **__. . . __the virus he'd been unable to remove, still latched parasitically onto Ralph's programming . . . _and began entering the code that he alone knew, the sequence that would initiate a total emergency shutdown of Fix-It Felix Jr.

He reached the final entry in the sequence, then moved his hand over the _Start _button . . . the key that, once depressed, would begin the countdown . . . and paused.

Felix's hand began to tremble over the button. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, struggling against every impulse inside of him that begged him not to push it . . . then turned and looked up at Ralph, unshed tears stinging behind his eyes.

"Y-you . . . you ready, brother?" he whispered.

Ralph kept his back turned to him, silently clenched his fists, and nodded. Felix looked back to the console, suppressing a choking sob that wracked his small frame . . . let out a soft, steady exhale of heartbroken resolve . . . .

. . . and pushed the button.

Instantly, an ear-splitting warning alarm began to blare from some untraceable source all around them, sending deep shudders through Felix's insides with each repetition . . . but before it had sounded more than three times, Ralph had already scooped him up in one hand and was climbing rapidly up out of the wreckage of the building.

_"WARNING . . . WARNING," _a calm, disembodied, genderless voice appeared beneath the constant drone of the alarm; _"EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN INITIATED. EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN INITIATED. GAME WILL ENTER EMERGENCY HIBERNATION MODE IN T-MINUS ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SECONDS. ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SECONDS TO EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN."_

Scarcely before Felix could recover from the shock of the alarm, Ralph had already reached the others again and set him down gently but quickly on the grass beside them.

Tamora was struggling to lift Mike off the ground with as little jostling as possible. The instant his wife's hands raised her torso an inch into the air, Mike sucked in a ragged breath and let out the most horrible cry of agony he had ever heard. Vanellope cringed and looked away, and in the corner of his eye, Felix could see Ralph covering his face wretchedly with one hand. With every tiny shift of her limbs, Mike shuddered and moaned in inexpressible pain . . . but with both the cruiser and Vanellope's kart out of commission, they had no other option for moving her. Tamora set her jaw in a grim line and finally stood up straight, hoisting the frail body up into her arms . . . Mike's head rolled back, her hands stiffened into claws, and her cries degenerated into a faint, but continual stream of whimpering and sharp inhales that were mercifully all but drowned out by the blare of the warning alarm.

_"ONE HUNDRED AND TEN SECONDS TO SHUTDOWN."_

As soon as his wife was on her feet with Mike securely in hand, there was a split second of paralyzed motionless between the four of them as the surreal, devastating reality of the moment abruptly came crashing down on them. All eyes turned suddenly on Ralph . . . and for the briefest instant, the grotesque effects of his viral transformation seemed to melt away before them. For the briefest instant, Felix felt as if he could see past the monstrous size and torn clothing and glowing eyes, deep down to the old familiar features of the candid, clumsy, big-hearted wrecker he knew and loved . . . whom they _all _loved . . . and it made the painfulness of the moment immeasurably more intense.

Felix removed his cap again, blinking away tears - agonizingly aware of the rate at which their last precious seconds were slipping away - as he walked directly up to Ralph, tilting his head back to look him straight in the eye.

He opened his mouth to speak . . . choked up, cleared his throat, and finally managed to call out above the din of the alarm . . .

"Well, I . . . I guess . . . _this is goodbye."_

He held up one gloved, trembling hand.

_"ONE HUNDRED SECONDS TO SHUTDOWN."_

With his face twisted in a grimace of suppressed grief and resignation, Ralph lowered down to one knee and reached out to shake the hand between his thumb and forefinger . . . then paused, and instead, abruptly swept Felix bodily up off the ground in one hand, hugging him gently to his chest. His heart leaping into his mouth at the suddenness of the encompassing gesture, Felix went rigid for only an instant . . . then squeezed his eyes shut and spread his arms wide to hug back against the monstrously broad, paint-spattered chest. He felt a warm vibration all around him, and realized that it was Ralph murmuring under his breath.

"I'm lucky to have had you for a good guy . . . brother."

Felix couldn't bring himself to say anything more in return. Ralph set him back down on the grass . . . then turned his gaze toward Calhoun.

His own vision blurring with tears, Felix rubbed his eyes quickly and looked at his wife, who was visibly straining to cradle Mike in both arms as gently as possible as she stared back up at Ralph, her features wrought in what, to anyone else, would have looked like a glare of searing anger . . . but Felix knew her well enough to see clearly through it the sorrow masked underneath.

_"NINETY SECONDS TO SHUTDOWN."_

Tamora cleared her throat and hung her head.

"For . . . for what it's worth, Wreck-It . . . " she said hoarsely, unconsciously hugging Mike more protectively; " . . . I want you to know, that . . . of all the games you could have barged into on that day . . . I'm . . . _I'm glad you picked mine_."

Ralph looked at her . . . gave a soft, sad smile . . . and nodded.

" . . . I love you too, Sarge."

At that, Felix couldn't help it. In spite of himself . . . in spite of everything . . . he laughed sorrowfully, rubbing fresh tears from his eyes with the heel of his hand.

There was another split second of silence, save for the noise of the alarm . . . and then, Ralph turned to look at Vanellope.

_"EIGHTY SECONDS TO SHUTDOWN."_

Ralph lowered both hands to the grass, and without an instant's hesitation Vanellope ran forward and threw herself into them, sobbing hysterically. He lifted her up to his face, and the two of them began to whisper inaudibly with each other. Felix looked on in heartbroken helplessness for a moment before moving to stand beside his wife.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Vanellope threw her arms around Ralph's face, crying so hard she could scarcely breathe.

_"Please, Ralphie. Please don't do this."_

She felt a single drop of moisture seeping into her hair from above, and the wall of his palm pressed in closer behind her back, sealing her in a little cave of darkness and warmth.

"You know I have to, kid," he whispered back.

Vanellope squeezed her eyes shut tighter, her shoulders wracking so hard they ached.

_The worst of it was that he was right. She did know._

_As fiercely as she didn't want to accept it . . . as unbearable as it was, as permanently as her heart was breaking, her world crumbling down around her . . . she knew that this was the way it had to be._

_Far away, in the back of her mind . . . she could hear Mike's voice speaking to her, as clearly and warmly as she had that afternoon not so very long ago in her bedroom, with the pink-toned Sugar Rush sunlight streaming through the windows and playing on her wild hair and freckled face._

_She had just reached up with one hand to tenderly brush the bangs out of Vanellope's face . . . and Vanellope hadn't stopped her._

_"He does need you, Vanellope. He always will."_

_"Yeah, but . . . you know . . . he needs __**you**__, now, too." _

_Mike._

_He needs you now, too . . . ._

_"SEVENTY SECONDS TO SHUTDOWN."_

The relentless voice of the countdown blared all around and drew her back into awful reality. Vanellope squeezed Ralph so fiercely her arms ached, burying her face in the tacky skin beside his nose and breathing in his smell one last time - the pungent smell she'd complained about and teased him for so often, and had grown to love so much over the past year of her life. When she whispered back to him, her voice was so soft and distorted with trembling cries, she could scarcely hear it herself.

_" . . . au revoir . . . Admiral Underpants."_

She felt his mouth turning in a smile and fresh tears rolling down his cheek at the same time.

_"See you later . . . President Fartfeathers."_

For one final, silent moment . . . a moment that she wished could last forever . . . they remained there, motionless, together.

_"SIXTY SECONDS TO EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN."_

Then . . . in one horrible blur of movement and cold air rushing all around her once more . . . Ralph lowered her back to the ground and rose stiffly to his full height, looking down on them with a stare of forced blankness.

"Now _go," _he commanded stonily.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_"FIFTY SECONDS TO SHUTDOWN."_

A few moments after the calm, disembodied countdown announced the fifty second mark, Vanellope, Calhoun, Felix reached the exit of Fix-It Felix Jr. and disappeared down the dark mouth of the tunnel without even glancing at the train, which even in their weakened state would have been slower than running.

Ralph stood silently in place on the grass in front of the ruined building and kept his eyes on Mike's pale, pained face as long as he possibly could . . . then, as soon as the four of them had vanished from sight, he let his breath out in a long, weary exhale of relief, and sat down cross-legged on the ground.

_"FORTY SECONDS TO SHUTDOWN."_

The warning alarm was blaring louder than ever, but he scarcely heard it anymore. The moment he sat down and hunched his shoulders forward, Ralph realized for the first time how utterly exhausted he was, how intensely every muscle in his body was aching . . . and yet, at the same time, a sense of numbness was gradually coming over him, as if his pain and guilt had finally reached too great a capacity to bear and caused his heart to lapse into an emotional unconsciousness.

He looked down at his hands.

He looked backed over his shoulder at the scattered wreckage of the apartment building.

He looked toward East Niceland, where he was somewhat amused to see that his little brick shack was actually still standing, completely unharmed . . .

. . . and at that moment, something suddenly occurred to him.

His face a mask of blankness, with the remnants of glowing tears still lingering in his eyes, Ralph gruffly pushed himself onto his feet again and began lumbering toward the East end of the game . . . briefly stricken, as he went, by a staggering sense of déjà vu and acute muscle memory.

_So many times in his life - how many? - had he trudged this same path from the building to the dump, alone, resenting every step . . . and now . . . ._

_. . . would this be the last time he ever walked it?_

_How ironic . . . that this same solitary walk, which had for years been nothing but a painful enforcer of his own loneliness . . . would now be the very thing that gave him a brief sense of peace and comfort . . . almost even acceptance._

_This was it._

_This was the way things had to be._

"_THIRTY SECONDS TO SHUTDOWN."_

Ralph came to a stop outside his front door, half smirking to himself at how comically small his already meager shack now looked from his mutated height. Without a moment's thought, he lifted his hand and unceremoniously tore off the roof of the cottage in one clean, wrenching motion. Then, with both hands, he pulled the front wall off of its foundations and tossed it aside.

When the dust cleared, he stepped over the threshold of his now open-air, three-walled shack and shuffled through the loose bricks and shingles on the floor over to his bed.

"_TWENTY SECONDS TO SHUTDOWN."_

With one hand, Ralph lifted up his bed like a trap door, and with the other, carefully picked up the dark green sweater that was still lying folded on the floor beneath it. Then, setting his bed back down, he leaned over . . . wet the tip of one finger on his tongue . . . and ever, ever, _ever _so gently pressed it to the tiny cookie-heart medal hanging from the wall. It stuck, and once he had carefully shifted it into the palm of his right hand and the sweater into his left, he sat down on the bed.

THHHRRUNK!

The thick, wooden legs snapped instantly under his weight like toothpicks, the frame cracking and the mattress compressing almost completely flat between him and the floor . . . but Ralph barely noticed.

"_EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN IN T-MINUS TEN SECONDS . . . __**TEN **__. . . __**NINE **__. . ."_

Ralph smiled softly to himself as he looked down at the medal, almost forgetting everything happening around him as its cheerful colors and sweet aroma momentarily transported back to memories of Sugar Rush . . . _of Vanellope_ . . .

Then, turning to the sweater, he lifted it up to his nose and inhaled hopefully . . . and was delighted to discover that he was still able to detect the faintest hint of Mike's smell clinging to the yarn - her warm, earthy smell, like paint and paper and freshly scrubbed skin.

" . . . _**EIGHT **__. . . __**SEVEN **__. . . ."_

_He was sitting in his Bad-Anon meeting, staring up at the ceiling and looking out across the arcade in amazement at the soft, white glow of the Masterwork console._

_The girl with her hands against the glass was leaning forward, pressing her pixie nose and pink, puckered lips against it. If he squinted, he could just make out a wash of freckles sprinkling her pale face._

"_. . . __**SIX **__. . ."_

_He was standing with her in her warmly-lit studio, looking over her shoulder at the drawing on her sketchpad._

"_I . . . I just wanted to tell you, that . . . I think you have beautiful hands, Ralph."_

" _. . . __**FIVE **__. . ."_

_He was sitting with her in his lap on the back of Vanellope's kart as they drove through the tunnel toward Sugar Rush._

_She was leaning over the side of the ring and kissing him on the cheek, seconds before he was knocked out cold by Johnny's Cage foot._

" _. . . __**FOUR **__. . ."_

_She was leaning against him on his bed, listening quietly as he told her everything about his life before he'd met her._

"_Mike," he was saying firmly, fighting to keep his voice steady as his heart leapt into his mouth. "Mike . . . can I ask you something?"_

"_Mmm-hmmmm."_

"_Why did you k . . . k . . . kiss me?"_

_She was curling up tighter into his pillow, one corner of her mouth turning up in an unconscious smile._

"_Because . . . I wanted . . . to. Ever since . . . I saw Calhoun . . . and Felix . . . doing it . . . I wanted to."_

"_. . . __**THREE **__. . ."_

_She was looking up at him palely in the Sugar Rush entryway . . . throwing her arms around his neck . . . kissing him . . . ._

"_. . . __**TWO **__. . ."_

"_Calhoun . . ." he was blurting out suddenly as they made their way down the narrow spire of Diet Cola Mountain, ". . . what happens if I __**can't **__set things right? What if Mike, and I . . . what if . . . what if I can't ever __**be with her **__again?"_

_Calhoun was looking up at him with an iron-hard gleam in her eyes, speaking softly enough so that only he could hear._

"_Then the important thing is that you still __**tried**__."_

" _. . . _**ONE**."

"_When you love someone, Ralph . . . it isn't about what they can do for you. It's about what you can do for __**them**__."_

Ralph closed his eyes, then gently closed his hands around the precious objects resting in his palms.

"It's about what I can do for _her." _

"_EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN NOW ENGAGING."_

The constant blare of the warning alarm abruptly ceased. Everything fell absolutely silent, and Ralph looked up just in time to catch a fleeting, final glimpse of the world around him . . . the world of Fix-It Felix Jr. . . . before everything was swallowed up in darkness.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

The four of them had been catching their breath at the bottom of the stairs in the Fix-It Felix Jr. anteroom . . . Vanellope and Felix doubled over with their hands on their knees, panting, Calhoun panting even harder as she sat on the floor with Mike still cradled protectively in her lap . . . for less than ten seconds when the disembodied voice that had gradually faded away behind them as they'd run further and further down the tunnel suddenly reappeared . . . fainter, and very far-away, but clearly audible once again.

"_Emergency shutdown now engaging."_

Despite the ragged gasps of breath aching in her lungs and the tears still clinging to her eyelashes, Vanellope jerked her head up to stare anxiously at the nearby entrance to Fix-It Felix Jr., half expecting it to collapse in on itself the way the opening into Masterwork had . . . but it didn't.

She stared unblinkingly at the mouth of the tunnel, and for a moment . . . nothing seemed to be happening at all.

Then . . . gradually . . . so gradually that she didn't notice it until it had nearly crept its way out beyond the rim of the opening . . . there came a _darkness._

It was a darkness blacker than the already-black interior of the lightless tunnel, blacker than any darkness Vanellope had ever seen or imagined . . . and it was seeping out in absolute soundlessness, like a sentient fog, into the Fix-It Felix Jr. anteroom.

Ignoring her own labored breathing, Calhoun immediately pushed back to her feet with Mike in tow and began walking briskly down the plug gate, toward the golden light of the station.

"Come on," was all she said.

But despite the cold sensation of horror that the creeping darkness sent shuddering down Vanellope's spine, she couldn't yet bring herself to turn away. For another second, she stood rooted in place, staring miserably at the encroaching blackness without seeing it . . . _seeing nothing in her mind's eye but Ralph, with that look of blank acceptance on his face, shrinking further and further away behind her as she and the others had run for the exit . . . _when suddenly, she jumped as she felt a gloved hand closing firmly around her shoulder.

"_Come on, Vanellope,"_ Felix said softly, gently turning her around and walking her with him toward the station. "There's nothing we can do now . . . but _wait."_

With fresh tears filling her eyes as she allowed herself to be led away, Vanellope turned back to look over her shoulder once more at the steadily darkening anteroom, at the entrance to Fix-It Felix Jr. that was become murkier and less visible with each passing second.

_Please, Ralph . . . please don't leave us._

_Please . . . . don't leave me. _

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph opened his eyes.

He blinked, shook himself lightly . . . closed them, then opened them again.

Fix-It Felix Jr. was gone.

The consuming blackness that had swarmed in to replace it was also gone.

All around him, in every direction as far as he could see, there was . . . white. An endless, empty, featureless universe of white.

For a moment, he half believed that he had somehow been inexplicably transported back to the empty zone that lie between Masterwork and the Internet . . . but the next second, he realized that it couldn't be so, because not only was there gravity in this place, but also a solid floor beneath his feet. Granted, it was a white, eternal floor with no distinguishable horizon line to separate it from the rest of the void . . . but it was a floor, nonetheless.

It was in peering down curiously to inspect this floor that Ralph happened to glance at his hands and suddenly realize that they were empty, that both the cookie medal and the sweater had vanished and were nowhere to be seen. Immediately after this, Ralph realized that his hands were clean again, that all the dried paint spatters and dirt were magically gone . . . and immediately after this, he realized that he had changed completely back to his old self again. His clothes were no longer tattered and stretched threadbare over his skin, the strap of his overalls no longer digging painfully into his shoulder . . . his body and muscles returned to their normal, modest bulk. It was as if the transformation of the virus had never happened at all.

The next thing Ralph noticed was that in spite of having no idea where he was or what was going on, he felt not even the slightest trace of either fear or anxiety. In fact, he was completely and utterly filled a sense of absolute calm, absolute peace and serenity. It wasn't that he had forgotten about Mike, or Vanellope and the Fix-Its, or the emergency shutdown . . . he remembered it all perfectly clearly . . . but somehow, there just didn't seem to be any reason to be frightened or upset about anything anymore.

His thoughts beginning to wander aimlessly, Ralph scanned his eyes once more around his endless white surroundings, turning a slow circle in place . . . and then, when he'd turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees to look behind him for the first time since arriving . . . he stopped cold.

All of a sudden, without a single sound or hint of warning . . . he saw something, a small shape of color and shadow standing out against the white background as starkly as a black dot. It was sitting motionlessly on the floor perhaps two dozen yards away.

Intrigued . . . but still unalarmed . . . he began walking toward it.

As he drew steadily closer and the outlines of the colored shape grew steadily clearer, Ralph abruptly saw that the thing ahead of him was not an object, but a _person. _With another step, he could make out the dark auburn of their shaggy hair . . . with another, their long green pants . . . with another, the tanned color of their skin and lanky shape of their limbs as they sat cross-legged on the floor, their shoulders slumped and their head hanging dejectedly . . .

And then, all at once, Ralph was standing ten feet away from the seated stranger . . . and he saw that it was not a stranger at all.

He knew exactly who it was.

His imperturbable sense of calmness abruptly shattered.

His brow narrowed and his eyes went wide, his mouth opening in a silent paroxysm of disbelief . . . and a for a short moment, he just stared speechlessly.

The person - the young man - lifted his head to glance up at him . . . and a small, weary smile spread across his sorrowful countenance. There wasn't the slightest hint of surprise in his expression . . . if anything, he looked as if he had been waiting expectantly for the moment of their encounter.

Ralph's jaw worked once soundlessly . . . then, he heard the name come stammering incredulously up out of his throat, resonating like an echo through the atmosphere of that still, white, peaceful emptiness.

"Ar . . . . _Artemisio?"_

Artemisio looked back at him with softly glowing blue eyes. He hooked one corner of his smile slightly higher and lifted his right hand in a casual, half-hearted wave.

"Hey there, Ralph."


	47. Chapter 46: Artemisio

**A/N: **Uuuunnnnngghhhh another installment closer to completion! If all goes according to plan, there will be two more chapters and an epilogue after this one, rounding the story out to 50 installments. Now we just have to see if I can make that happen. T_T

Unfortunately, there's no art posted for this chapter yet, but that's mostly because I'm working on a metric BUTTLOAD of drawings for the next one. Maybe I'll try to scratch something up for this chapter later . . .

Side note . . . if Ellen Page were my fantasy voice actor for Mike, then Toby Maguire would be my fantasy choise for Artemisio. Hope you enjoy!

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 46: Artemisio_

The person - the young man - lifted his head to glance up at him . . . and a small, weary smile spread across his sorrowful countenance. There wasn't the slightest hint of surprise in his expression . . . if anything, he looked as if he had been waiting expectantly for the moment of the their encounter.

Ralph's jaw worked once soundlessly . . . then, he heard the name come stammering up incredulously out of his throat, resonating like an echo through the atmosphere of that still, white, peaceful emptiness.

"Ar . . . . _Artemisio?"_

Artemisio looked back at him with softly glowing blue eyes. He hooked one corner of his smile slightly higher and raised his right hand in a casual, half-hearted wave.

"Hey there, Ralph."

For another moment, Ralph was too shocked to say anything more . . . he and the phantom sitting in front of him simply stared at one another in dumb silence. After several seconds, Artemisio let out a chuckle of amusement - but it was a sad, mirthless sound - and cleared his throat. With a visible twinge of self-consciousness, he gestured once toward the floor.

"Why don't you . . . ah . . . make yourself comfortable?"

His voice was gentle and lilting, with just a slight rasp, and almost irreproachably calm, as if he knew something very serious . . . _or indeed, a great many very serious things _. . . which Ralph didn't, and which gave him automatic authority over the moment.

Ralph didn't move. His jaw was still hovering open and his eyes narrowed unblinkingly.

"You're _Artemisio," _he repeated blankly, his brain still grappling to fully register the idea.

The young man laughed again, slightly louder and more embarrassed than before, and awkwardly scratched the side of his head.

"Yeah, ha ha . . . ah, well . . . I guess I _am_, but . . . you can just call me Art, if you like. It's, ah . . . nice to finally meet you in person, Ralph."

He remained seated and held his hand out earnestly toward Ralph, who just gaped at him speechlessly for another moment . . . then finally, numbly, as if in a trance, reached out and took it, slowly shaking it between his thumb and forefinger.

If the bizarre encounter had happened anyplace else, Ralph would have felt somewhat sheepishly obligated to keep the chaotic torrent of confused thoughts buzzing in his head to himself, and wait for an explanation to come forth of its own volition . . . but in that place, everything was different. _There, _standing in the endless white of that non-world, shaking hands with a person in whose factual presence he was still not entirely able to believe . . . the formality of manners didn't quite seem to matter anymore.

"I don't understand," Ralph said bluntly, dropping the hand and letting his own fall heavily back to his sides. "You . . . you . . . you're not supposed to _exist."_

Artemisio - or _Art, _rather - simply made a resigned face, and shrugged.

"Well . . . in the common sense of the word, at least . . . I _don't_."

Ralph's already-hanging head sank another perplexed inch beneath his shoulders.

Art sighed and gave him a weary, but understanding smile. "Please . . . take a seat, Ralph. We may be here for a little while."

Not knowing what else to do, Ralph finally obeyed, never once removing his dumbfounded gaze from Artemisio's face as he sat down slowly on the floor. He crossed his legs and hunched forward to rest his elbows on his knees, subconsciously mimicking the posture of his new companion.

"Sorry, but . . . I'm a little _confused_, here," he muttered. "I . . . I thought I was supposed to be locked inside the emergency shutdown of my game right now."

Art nodded candidly. "That's right. You _are."_

Ralph blinked. "So . . . I'm_ still in Fix-It Felix Jr.?_ This . . . " he paused to wave his finger in a swirling motion at the surrounding void; " . . . _this _is what it's like inside a shut-down game?"

"Aaahh, well . . . yes, and _no_. You _are_ still in Fix-It Felix Jr., but . . . to tell you the truth, I don't really know what it's like inside a shut-down game. I've never seen it before. Neither have you. Tell you the _whole _truth, I don't know if anyone ever will."

Ralph slumped further forward, more bewildered than ever. "But . . . _hang on a sec, _here . . . if I'm still . . . and this _isn't, _then_ . . ._ how can I still be . . . where the heck _are _we, then?"

Art gave him a warm, knowing look and gently tapped his left temple with the tip of his finger.

"Your mind_, _Ralph. We're inside of your _mind."_

Ralph raised his eyebrows.

"My _mind_."

Art nodded.

Ralph blinked and went silent a for a moment, turning his head around slowly and scanning the white emptiness all around them.

"So . . . let me see if I've got this straight. You're saying that this . . . all of _this . . . _this place you and I are sitting in, right now . . . _" _he gestured to the air with one hand, then pushed one fingertip into his forehead; " . . . this is my _mind."_

Art nodded again.

Ralph tilted one eyebrow unenthusiastically and looked around once more. "Not too much goin' _on_ in here, is there?"

Art let out a snort of laughter - a real, genuine laugh this time. "_Ha . . ._ well,no, I suppose not! . . . Not at the moment, anyway. But don't be too hard on yourself, it isn't your fault. Take a look up there."

Frowning curiously, Ralph followed the path of Art's vertically pointing finger with his eyes until his head was tilted straight back . . . and gave a sudden start of alarm.

High up and directly above their heads, in the middle of the expanse where, were they inside a normal room, a ceiling would have been . . . there was a _spot_, a dark blip staining the white nothingness. At first, Ralph thought it was a solid object suspended in space . . . but after staring at it another moment, he realized that it was actually a _hole, _an opening in the very fabric of the void that looked out into someplace dark and inscrutable. Not only that, but as he watched it, he saw that the opening was growing larger, expanding slowly and steadily like a cigarette burn smoldering on a white sheet . . . and around its continually morphing perimeter, there was a just barely discernible outline of crackling, electric blue light.

"You see?" Art continued. "This white place we're sitting in isn't your _real _mind, Ralph . . . it's kind of a like an artificial bubble _coating _the inside of your mind. What you see through that hole up there, that's your _true _mind . . . and very soon now, it's going to be free again. As we speak, the shutdown of Fix-It Felix Jr. is eating away at the bubble . . . deleting it from your code and your consciousness."

Ralph gaped in fascination at the dark opening a moment longer . . . but as soon as Art's words registered fully in his ears, he immediately remembered what Mike had told him about her own mind the first night that they'd met, while she was gently cleaning the dried paint from his eye with an oiled cloth . . .

_" . . . I don't know what, or how, but . . . it's like there's some kind of __**wall **__around me, or . . . or a weight, or a __**fog**__, or . . . I don't know. It's just like __**something **__is holding me, slowing me down, keeping me back."_

"A _wall," _Ralph muttered to himself, narrowing his eyes once more at the expanding darkness . . . then looking back down at Artemisio. "You mean . . . the _virus_."

The grim sadness returned abruptly to Art's features, and he hung his head and nodded.

"Right. It's deleting . . . the _virus."_

Ralph paused, flattening his mouth into a thoughtful line. Perhaps it was the consuming tranquility of the white void overtaking him once more, but for some reason he didn't even feel a passing trill of excitement or relief at this news.

"So . . . if we're inside my _mind _right now . . . and this white wall around us is the _virus, _and it's slowly being deleted_, _then . . . what does that make _you?" _Ralph tried to articulate the question as kindly as possible, but he still noticed a telltale flicker of shame and dejection flit across Art's glowing eyes. "I mean . . . no _offense,_ but . . . if this is all happening in my head, then that probably means I've finally gone off the deep end and you're just some cuckoo figment of my imagination . . . right?"

The sadness in Art's frown grew heavier, and he sighed as his head sank lower over his wiry shoulders.

" . . . no, Ralph. At this point, I wish I _was_ imaginary . . . I wish I didn't exist at _all, _not even in a _figurative _sense of the word . . . but I do. Unfortunately for both of us, Ralph, I _do._ I really am here."

Ralph's brow furrowed with a mixture of both genuine pity and confusion.

"Artemi - I mean, _Art . . . _I'm sorry, but . . . you're really not making any sense here, buddy."

In spite of the heavy pallor of sorrow darkening his face, a faint smirk of amusement turned on one corner of Art's mouth.

_"Buddy," _he repeated the word softly as if to himself. "Ha. Now _there's _something I never thought I'd hear anyone call me . . . even as a joke. Come to think of it . . . I guess I never thought I'd actually get to _talk _to anyone, at all." He paused briefly, then lifted his eyes up to meet Ralph's with a sad, but almost grateful glimmer of a smile; " . . . but I like it."

Stricken for a moment with heartrending pangs of a sympathy he still didn't fully understand, Ralph held Art's gaze uncomfortably for a few seconds before coughing lightly and looking away, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.

"Yeah, you . . . ah . . . you still didn't answer my question, though. If you're not _real, _but . . . you're still really _here . . . _and if you _don't _exist, but at the same time you _do . . . _and you're in my head, but you're _not _imaginary, then . . . what in the world _are _you?"

The last remains of Art's smile vanished completely.

"Well . . . I suppose the simplest answer is . . . I'm the virus."

Ralph froze.

Artemisio drew in a long, deep breath, then let it out slowly.

"Let me start at the beginning . . . " he muttered sadly, running one hand through the shaggy curls hanging over his forehead.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_The first thing I remember . . . is her hand._

_Michelangela's hand._

_Not that I could see it, mind you. I couldn't see her hand, couldn't feel it . . . I couldn't see or hear or feel anything. It's a little hard to explain. _

_I just . . . __**was**__. I had no body, no senses, no real, quantifiable existence of any kind, but . . . I was just __**there**__, somehow. I was there, and that was all I knew . . ._

_. . . until her __**hand**__. She reached out and touched her fingertip to the blank canvas on her easel . . . there was a jolt of light and electricity ( which I couldn't see or feel, again . . . I was just __**aware **__of it, somehow ) . . . and then, all at once, I wasn't in the same place as I was before, wherever that was. I had instantly gone from somewhere very dark, to somewhere very much like this place . . . white, and empty, and endless._

_I didn't know it at the time . . . but it was the inside of Mike's mind. That's where I was . . . and for a long time afterwards, for most of my life up until now, in fact . . . that's where I stayed._

_And I didn't know it then, but at that time, I had already contracted the Love Bug virus . . . or at least, a small part of it._

_I didn't know any of this in the beginning . . . I'll tell you how I learned it all, in a moment . . . but you see, Masterwork was originally designed to have full-fledged online gaming capabilities, with uninterrupted access to the Internet. The cabinet must have been built with a Wifi hook-up that was functional, but unprotected, and never fully integrated into the game . . . because when we were first plugged in, the surge of electricity kick-started the adapter, and for one precious moment . . . whether it was minutes, or seconds, I don't know . . . but for just one moment immediately after it was plugged in, Masterwork was linked up to a wireless Internet connection . . . and that was when it - when I - contracted the first germ of the virus._

_That was when the first germ of the Love Bug attached itself to me__. . . to __**whatever **__I was, then - a random collection of program fragments, the ghost of an unfinished character - it doesn't matter. All I know is that before the virus melded itself into my code, I was essentially nothing . . . and afterward, I was __**something**__. Something horrible, maybe . . . but I didn't realize that, then. And after that, the next thing I knew was that I had somehow entered Michelangela's mind, through that first connection with her fingertip . . . I was __**inside **__her consciousness, the same way I'm inside of yours right now, Ralph . . ._

_. . . and that was when the __**real **__trouble started._

_You see, Ralph . . . in those few short seconds between the moment the virus made me aware of my own existence, and the moment I entered Mike's mind and my code was synced up inside of hers . . . I didn't feel any pain, or remorse, or regret. I didn't feel __**anything **__. . . because I didn't know what I was, I didn't know what __**life **__was. I guess you could say that . . . in a way . . . I was better off, because I didn't know what I was missing._

_And then . . . once I came into Mike's head . . . I found out what I was missing._

_Inside her mind, with the seed of the virus cobbling my code fragments together into a truly self-aware consciousness . . . I learned everything that she knew, and quite a few things she didn't. I didn't know it at the time, but it was my presence in her code . . . the presence of the virus . . . that slowed her down, hindered her, kept her from understanding things that every normal character understands from the first moment of their inception. __**I **__was the thing you mistakenly called a glitch . . . __**I **__was the fog, the weight, the __**wall**__._

_I learned that I was trapped inside of a game that I could never really be a part of. I learned that I was nothing more than an aborted program, an incomplete skeleton of a character never intended to exist . . . and worst of all, Ralph . . . I learned about __**her**__._

_Had I been real . . . had the programmers finished me . . . I don't know what my relationship with Mike would have been. It was one of the few things I could never find out, no matter how hard I scoured the Masterwork code for information ( which, shortly after entering Mike's head, I discovered that the virus enabled me to do ). I don't know if I was meant to be her brother, her neighbor . . . her friend, colleague, co-worker . . . _

_. . . her husband . . ._

_. . . I don't know._

_What I did know was that before I knew she existed, I hadn't known what pain was . . . . and afterwards, I did. _

_She was the only other person in my entire world . . . the only person there ever would be . . . and no matter what I did, how hard I tried, I couldn't communicate with her. I was inside her very __**mind **__. . . I knew everything about her, __**everything**__ . . . and yet, I wasn't even able to make her realize that I existed._

_I don't think I have any words to explain the horror, and the loneliness, that I felt._

_I didn't understand then that it was the virus . . . the very thing that allowed me to occupy her mind in the first place . . . that was simultaneously stopping me from being able to talk to her in her own subconscious, the way I'm talking to you, now - which I'm only able to do because of the shutdown. Then again . . . I didn't really even understand what the virus __**was**__. All I knew was that it had come from outside of our game, entered through the strange tunnel on the right . . . that somehow, it had made me stronger than I was before . . . and that I had only gotten the first taste of it._

_Time moves differently when you're outside of physical reality. All of these things took place in a space of seconds . . . but to me, it was like a short lifetime. A few minutes after Masterwork had finished calibrating, Mike got up and looked out of the player screen. Through her eyes, I saw the arcade . . . I saw the true extent of the world I would never be a part of . . . and then, through her eyes . . ._

_. . . I saw __**you**__, Ralph._

_I'm still not sure whether or not Mike really saw you . . . but I did. And the __**virus **__did._

_And it was at that moment that I discovered what kind of power the virus actually had . . . because the second after I - and __**it **__- saw you, the second after your eyes made that first distant contact with hers . . . it did something to you._

_I don't know what you'd call it, really . . . hypnosis, radio infection, code baiting . . . but whatever it was, that was the moment the virus got its first hooks into you and began drawing you subconsciously toward itself. I may have only caught the first germ of the Love Bug, but it was already charging forward with its natural plan of attack . . . thanks to me, it already had a host program - Mike - and now, it needed a transmitter. You. _

_I'm not asking you to forgive me, Ralph . . . but I am asking you to try to understand, that what I did next . . . I did out of desperation._

_I decided to try and contract the rest of the virus._

_I didn't know the Love Bug was trying to draw you into Masterwork to infect you with the viral transmission code . . . I only knew that it had somehow reached outside the physical limits of its own code to contact another program. I reasoned that if the precursory germ of the Love Bug could do __**that **__. . . and had also been enough to give me a real consciousness, and attach me to Michelangela's mind . . . then maybe the rest of it would be enough to at least make me able to **talk **to her. _

_All I had to do was find a way to connect Masterwork to the Internet again._

_Through my attachment to Mike's code, I was able to access the code for the rest of our game . . . on a purely non-physical level . . . and that was how I triggered the error message._

_I waited until the next day, when Masterwork was being played and I knew someone would be sure to see it . . . then I flashed the error message on the screen, and Litwak took the bait. He plugged us into a permanent Internet connection._

_It didn't take long after that for the Love Bug to close in. Like a hive of bees following the trail left by a single sentry, the entirety of the virus was drawn to the single germ . . . it came through the tunnel on the right and entered Mike's body, made her program its permanent host . . . and inside her mind, it and I were fused together into one, inseparable structure. _

_Immediately after that, incredible things began happening. I found out that through the influence of the virus, not only was I able to alter physical parts of Masterwork's code at will . . . I could actually reach a fragment of my consciousness outside of the game . . . like a tentacle . . . and use it to explore the Internet. _

_You've been to the Internet yourself, Ralph . . . I don't need to tell you what it was like. But it was by exploring the Internet that I began to truly learn things. After being trapped in the prison of my own non-existence for what felt like half an eternity, I can't tell you how incredible it was to be able to see into that world of endless information . . . even if I couldn't ever actually go there in person. Coincidentally, my access to the Internet had a curious effect on Mike . . . she was blocked from understanding some of the most basic things about our game, about life . . . but her capacity for processing **new** data - and even unconsciously siphoning extraneous information from online - sky-rocketed. It's how she was able to speak Japanese just from hearing a few phrases. _

_But in spite of all this, I was still playing with fire. The virus's power excited me, but I still didn't have a full grasp on what it was really capable of, nor what its ultimate goal was . . . and that's why, when __**you **__showed up in Masterwork, Ralph . . . my initial reaction was panic._

_I didn't know the virus itself had played a part in luring you there for its own purposes . . . I was just terrified of Mike telling anyone about the electric blue creature with many legs that had attacked her. I was afraid that if anyone ever realized what was going on . . . if they ever helped __**Mike **__realize what was going on . . . they would find a way to delete the virus, and by extension __**me**__, before I could accomplish what I'd set out to do._

_So I did everything I could think of to stop you from meeting her . . . . now that I look back on my efforts, I see how silly they were. I manipulated Masterwork's code as much as I possibly could . . . I killed the lights in the entry tunnel, I made the weather ominous and stormy, I wrote a glitch into the building so that whenever Mike was inside of it, it would be invisible from a distance . . . and of course, none of it worked._

_That night, I made three new discoveries. _

_First, I found out that although the virus and I were fused together, it could still act against my will . . . it wanted you and Mike to meet so that it could infect you with the transmitter, so it overpowered both of us and physically forced her to answer the door when you came knocking. _

_Second . . . I found out that the virus had its own blind agenda, completely different from mine. The moment you and Mike touched for the first time and you became the transmitter, the pieces came together and I realized that the virus didn't just want to control Masterwork . . . it wanted to infect as many programs as possible, to copy and steal as much information as possible._

_And finally . . . I found out that in spite of all this, I could still use the virus to my advantage._

_I discovered that from inside Mike's mind, I had the ability to make her forget . . . to "glitch" away small parts of her memory, if you will. I made her forget about the blue creature that had come from the tunnel on the right . . . . and then, at the last minute, I made one more change to the Masterwork code. I deleted my name from our mailbox - a cruel little background detail that must have been programmed before the game makers decided to abandon work on my character - so that no one, not even Mike, would ever find out about me . . . not until I was ready._

_Now that I thought I knew what the virus was really after, what it was really capable of . . . I was forming a new plan._

_I wasn't just going to try and use the Love Bug to communicate with Mike . . . not anymore. I was going to use it to steal from the code of other programs everything that had been left out of my own._

_I was going to make myself a body._

_And . . . after that . . . well . . . you already know most of what happened after that, Ralph._

_I'm telling you all of this, not just because you have a right to know . . . but because I gave up the right to keep it hidden the moment I decided I was going to use the virus's power for myself . . . regardless of who, or how many others might get hurt. I felt so cheated . . . so unfairly cheated out my own life . . . I really believed, for a while, that I was justified in stealing what I needed from other characters. I really believed that if I could take enough information to fill the holes in my unfinished code and make myself a real body, that at the end of it all, Mike and I would be able to live together in Masterwork the way we were always meant to. That she would understand . . . that she would forgive me . . . that she would be so happy to find out about me._

_I'm telling you all of this because I'm ashamed of it . . . because I deserve to be ashamed._

_Through you, Ralph, the virus spread to everyone you touched after your first meeting with Mike . . . first, the security level Surge Protectors, who are all just parts of the same central program, and caught it as a whole from your contact with just one of the officers . . . then Calhoun . . . then Felix . . . then Vanellope . . . then everyone in the crowd you bumped into during the lockdown . . . Zangief, and Johnny Cage, and everyone else you accidentally touched during the Street Fighter party . . . then Janowitz and Markowski . . ._

_. . . and I'm the one responsible for all of it. I just sat back and watched from inside Michelangela's mind . . . the way someone watches pictures on a screen . . . as the infection spread, as you and she became steadily closer to each other, as she met your friends and explored your world and began to grow happier and stronger . . . and more complete . . . without me. _

_I was inside of her **thoughts**, Ralph. I could see and read the feelings Mike was developing for you as clearly as words on a page . . . and I hated you for it. _

_And the more I hated you, the more determined I was to do whatever it took to get my own body, so that I could take Mike away from you . . . at the very same time I was using her like a puppet for my own ends. Through her - working in tandem with the virus - I fried the firewalls, all but destroyed the surge protection program coordinator . . . I deleted her memories whenever I thought prudent, whenever I was afraid she was getting too close to the truth. _

_When the two of you finally went into the Internet and found your way to Litwak's computer, I barely hesitated for an instant before attacking Mike's mind and causing her such pain that I knew you would panic and take her away before she could learn more . . . . but no matter how I tried, I wasn't able to keep her in the dark forever._

_She finally found the email addressed to Litwak, the email that told her everything about Masterwork and the virus . . . and when she learned the real truth at last . . . so did I._

_I had gotten so wrapped up in using the virus to get what I wanted, that I had long ago stopped wondering about what would happen to all the programs I stole from. I had known since the night you and Mike first met that the Love Bug's prerogative was to infect and copy as many programs as possible. What I didn't know, until that moment, was that its ultimate goal was to __**destroy**__ them . . . and that, in the process . . ._

_. . . . it would destroy Michelangela, as well._

_By that time, it was already too late._

_The virus was completely beyond my power to control . . . and as soon as I stopped working with it and tried to fight it, it relegated me to a back corner of Mike's mind, cut off my access to the Internet and the code of Masterwork, and left me totally helpless. The whole time, I thought I'd been using it to get what I wanted . . . and in reality, it had just been using me._

_If it hadn't been for you, Ralph . . . if you hadn't willingly taken the virus out of Mike's code and into your own when you did . . . ._

_I don't think there's any way I can ever possibly thank you enough for saving her . . . from __**me**__ . . . or make up for what I've done to you._

_To all of you._

_-_ 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

For a long moment after Artemisio finished his story, Ralph just stared at him in numb, stricken silence. When he finally spoke, his voice was dry and croaking from disuse.

"So . . . you've been here . . . trapped inside _my_ head . . . ever since I took the virus from Mike."

Art nodded solemnly, his features set in a rigid expression of shame.

"And . . . if the shutdown is deleting the virus from my code . . . " Ralph murmured, his eyes narrowing at the miserable figure in front of him; " . . . then . . . what's going to happen to you now?"

Art lifted his head slightly, as if surprised that the tone of the question contained so little rancor.

"I'm not completely sure," he answered softly, turning his head to one side. "But . . . if I had to guess . . . I'd say that I'm probably going to be deleted with it."

Ralph was silent for another moment.

He thought back on everything that had just been explained to him . . . every mystery that had just been revealed, in one continuous narrative of tragedy and guilt and heartbreak. He thought of all the pain and suffering that had been caused . . . that he himself had been made an unwitting accomplice in.

He took a good, long, hard look into Artemisio's eyes, glowing with the same soft blue light that he had come to see as synonymous with the virus . . . and he waited for the anger to come.

He waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . . but no matter how hard he belabored it, no matter how many times he rolled the causes of what should have been a completely justified rage around and around in his thoughts . . . the anger simply wouldn't come.

Ralph looked deep, deep down inside of himself . . . and found nothing but pity.

"I'm sorry."

Artemisio started as if he'd been shocked with electricity. He whipped his head toward Ralph and stared disbelievingly with wide, incredulous eyes.

_". . . what?" _

"I'm sorry, Art," he repeated, in a voice of toneless, unmasked sincerity; ". . . for everything that's happened to you."

Art's mouth hovered opened speechlessly for a few seconds.

"B-but . . . but I . . . _I'm _the one who . . . . _how? _How can you just . . . Ralph, it's _my _fault that Mike and your friends and all those other innocent characters got hurt . . . _my _fault that the virus took over your body, my fault that it even found its way into the arcade in the first place! How can you possibly forgive me so easily!?"

For the first time since meeting him, Ralph gave Art the small, sad hint of a smile.

"Because . . . I know what it's like to want something bad enough that you're willing to do bad things to get it."

Art just sat and stared quietly for another moment . . . then, he lowered his brows knowingly and returned the smile, but with an added shade of irremovable guilt.

"Don't forget, Ralph - I was there when you told Mike your story. I appreciate your being so understanding and all, but . . . I don't think you can quite compare a little thing like game-jumping to _willingly _unleashing a virus and endangering the lives of everyone in the arcade."

Ralph shrugged. "Maybe not, but . . . then again . . . I did the things I did because I wanted _pies _and a _penthouse. _You did the things you did because you wanted to _exist."_

Art sighed and shook his head sadly.

"That's still no excuse for all the pain I caused. I knew I was hurting people . . . I knew I was hurting _Mike _. . . and I didn't care."

Ralph opened his mouth to argue again, but quickly thought better of it and looked away. After a short moment of contemplative silence between them, Artemisio spoke again.

" . . . all I ever wanted was to _be _with her," he muttered dejectedly, looking down at his own hands with an almost self-loathing stare. "All I ever wanted was for her to _know _me. I . . . I know it's selfish of me to say this to you, of all people_, _Ralph, but . . . Mike . . . she's the only thing in this world I ever really _loved. _All I ever wanted was to _be with her. _How did it all go so wrong? Why . . . why did I ever let things get this bad?"

Ralph paused, the words hitting him in the chest like pangs of heartache . . . and the next second, he heard the reply coming out of his own mouth before his thoughts had even caught up with it.

"Because what you were doing, Art, you weren't doing out of love. When you really love someone . . . it isn't about what they can do for you. It's about what you can do for _them."_

Artemisio kept his face turned down silently for a moment, his eyes mysteriously blank . . . and when he finally looked up, Ralph almost thought he could see the faintest, shadowy impression of what might have been tears glowing in their corners.

"I'm glad she has someone like you, Ralph," he said softly. "She _deserves _someone like you."

Suddenly, the peace and stillness of the air around them was broken by a sharp, electric crackling noise, followed by a shrill, inhuman moan that started off quietly, and began to grow steadily louder with each passing second. Ralph jerked his head up and was alarmed to see that while they had been speaking, the expanding hole above them had erased more than half of the dome, and was gaining speed even as he looked at it. He and Artemisio were no longer surrounded in all directions by a void of endless white . . . instead, they were now sitting on a steadily shrinking space of white floor, beyond which lay another void of seemingly endless dark.

"The virus is dying," Art observed, with a sort of blank satisfaction. "The shutdown of Fix-It Felix Jr. is purging all alien programs from the game. Any minute now, the Love Bug will _finally_ be erased . . . and you and the others will finally have a chance to repair all the damage I've done."

As he watched the crackling perimeter of the floor drawing in closer and closer around them, Ralph couldn't help but think - once, nervously - that given the choice, he might have rather been stuck in the calming white world instead of this ominous dark one, whether it was his "true mind" or not . . . but as soon as the full weight of Art's words registered in his head, he immediately forgot everything else.

"So . . . you mean that once its erased, everyone really _will _get their abilities back? Felix will be able to help Mike, before it's too late?"

Art made a thoughtful face as he kept his eyes fixed on the encroaching ring of blue light.

"I hope so," he muttered, his tone gravely serious.

"And you don't . . . you don't think . . . it could be too late for her al_ready, _could it? I mean . . . we must have been sitting in here talking for at least - "

"No. You don't have to worry about that. We're inside your _mind, _Ralph . . . time moves a little differently in here, remember? The shutdown is still underway . . . that means it can't have been more than a few seconds on the outside."

In Ralph's surreal, mixed state of both uneasiness and unspeakable relief, the incredibility of this notion was lost on him. He swallowed thickly and looked around once more - the white island of floor on which they sat was now only a few dozen feet white, and growing smaller by the instant.

Then . . . as he was watching the nearest dark edge creeping toward them, Ralph suddenly realized that what he'd first thought to be a void of empty blackness steadily replacing the floor was actually a hard surface, a surface whose dimly visible pattern and texture began to look more and more familiar the longer he looked at it, until all at once he realized what it was . . .

_"Bricks?" _he exclaimed with a loud, hearty _guffaw _of amusement, grinning in spite of himself. Forgetting his anxieties for a moment, he turned to look again at the new surroundings of his mind, which he now saw was not an endless void, but four plain, distant brick walls enclosing around them like an enormous room. Ralph clapped one hand over his forehead and laughed out loud. "You've got to be kidding me . . . _t__hat's _what I've got going on in my 'true mind'? A bunch of _bricks!? HA! _Oh, sweet Mother Hubbard, wait until I tell Vanellope . . . she used to _love_ saying that I had bricks for brains . . . "

He trailed off with another chuckle of disbelief . . . but suddenly, at his own mention of Vanellope and the others, he was reminded of a grim and foreboding idea which up until that moment had almost slipped from his thoughts entirely. His grin vanished, and he turned to look uneasily at his companion.

"Um . . . Art?"

"Yes?"

"Not that it makes much of a difference at this point, I guess, but . . . what, um . . . what do you think is going to happen to _me? _After the virus is gone, I mean? Am I just going to be stuck inside my own head until someone restarts the game, or will I . . . will I be. . . ?"

Art breathed out a long, pained exhale and slowly rose to his feet. Ralph unconsciously imitated him, and for a few seconds the two of them stood up straight and regarded one another. The floor was only fifteen feet wide now.

" . . . I wish I could tell you, Ralph. Better yet . . . I wish I could take all of this back . . . stop it from ever happening. It's my fault that you and Mike are in this mess, and I . . . I . . . " his lilting voice began to choke up slightly, and he paused for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut and clearing his throat. " . . . I know it can't mean much to you now, but . . . I want you to know . . . _how truly sorry I am."_

The floor was now five feet wide on either side of them . . . and then, before he even realized it had happened, the whiteness had vanished from under Ralph's feet. The last remaining circle of the virus's bubble lingered for a few seconds underneath Artemisio, like a small platform . . . and then it was gone. The perimeter of blue light, which was growing rapidly weaker and fainter, began to creep up Art's feet . . . then his ankles, then his shins . . . and Ralph saw, with a sudden jolt of hollow finality, that it was slowly deleting him from existence, as completely as it had deleted the whiteness before him.

Without another second's hesitation, Ralph held out his hand and looked Artemisio straight in the eye, and with a strange lump catching in his throat, quietly muttered . . .

"You're wrong. It means _everything_. Apology . . . apology accepted."

Art's legs were completely gone, the erasing light now making its way steadily up to his waist. With an unreadable expression on his face, and a disbelieving mistiness in his glowing eyes . . . he reached up and shook Ralph's hand.

The light began to lick over the surface of his body faster and faster . . . the next second, it was past his ribs . . . the next, his shoulders . . . then, it was traveling down the length of both of his arms, and as Ralph felt Art's hand suddenly disappearing inside of his own, he opened his mouth and blurted out the first words that welled up from within him.

"I'm sorry she never got to meet you, Art."

Art smiled as the last inch of his neck vanished into thin air. The rim of light began to creep over his head and encircle his face.

"I'm not," he whispered. "Not anymore. If you do ever get out of here, Ralph . . . would you do me one favor?"

"Anything."

He hooked one corner of his smile . . . and gently closed his glowing eyes.

_"Don't ever tell her about me."_

Ralph opened his mouth to answer . . . but before he could draw the breath to speak again, Artemisio was already gone. All at once, Ralph found himself standing alone once more . . . in the dim, brick-lined confines of his own mind . . . with his hand still held out motionlessly in the air in front of him.


	48. Chapter 47: I've Got to Know

**A/N:**

. . . .

. . . . SWEET MERCIFUL GLOB IT'S FINALLY FINISHED.

Not the fic, this chapter, I mean. Remeber, we've still got two more to go after this. *wheezes* *sweats uncontrollably*

I am really, really, _really _sorry that this installment ended up taking so freaking long . . . between travelling, commission work, and getting ready to move next week, it was incredibly difficult to find prime creative time to work on this. I can't say I'm incredibly pleased with how parts of it turned out, but . . . hhhhhhhHHNNN I'M PRETTY SURE this is the best I'm going to do at this point. Thank you all so much for sticking with this dying Frankenbaby in its final hours.

On a happier note, this chapter has - as was promised - a LITERAL BUTTLOAD of accompanying illustrations posted on my dA. To warn you though, the pictures are all basically one big spoiler for the end of the chapter, so I would definitely advise reading it through before you take a look at them.

So enjoy, my friends. ENJOY THE FRUITS OF MY MADNESS.

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 47: I've Got to Know . . ._

"Hey . . . look, it's Vanellope! Look, everybody, over there - it's _President Vanellope!"_

No sooner had she trudged over the threshold of Fix-It Felix Jr. and into the golden, cruelly optimistic-looking light of Game Central Station - with tears blurring her eyes and Felix's hands still resting supportively on her shoulders - when Vanellope heard the familiar, frantic voice of Taffyta Muttonfudge ringing out from somewhere nearby. She glanced up in time to see literally the entire population of Sugar Rush jumping up from the rest area in the middle of the transit and hurrying toward them in an enormous, vibrantly colored swarm.

The next second, alerted to their presence by the sudden hubbub, another recognizable voice - or rather, a small chorus of voices - sounded from the immediate right of the gate.

"FELIX!"

_"FELIX!"_

" -#*-!(!"

The Nicelanders - along with Q*bert and his fellow monsters - whom Vanellope had all but completely forgotten about until that moment, had huddled themselves together in an anxious, tight-knit group a few yards from the Fix-It Felix Jr. entrance . . . as soon they spotted their game's protagonist, they began hurrying toward him with as much frantic speed as the Sugar Rush citizens.

Still too overwhelmed with her thoughts of Ralph and Mike and the shutdown to fully register the sight of both the Nicelanders and all of her own terrified subjects rushing toward them en masse, Vanellope just stood in front of the now-darkened game gate for a few seconds and blinked at them. An instant before she and the others were about to be mobbed by the flood of racers and candy citizens and 8-bit apartment-dwellers, she knee-jerkily raised her hands and opened her mouth to stop them . . . but before either she or Felix could issue an order, Calhoun beat both of them to it.

_"STOP."_

The sergeant's jarringly short command echoed off the station walls, and the wave of pint-sized characters stumbled to an abrupt halt in a huge half circle around the game entrance. Ignoring their startled looks, Calhoun added in her blunt, thundering voice; "Everyone needs to _STAY BACK _and give this girl some air."

She then turned to face them head on, and a collective gasp rippled through the crowd when they laid eyes on Mike's stiff, broken body still clutched protectively in her arms. A dull murmuring began to circulate through the group, and Vanellope noticed multiple surge protectors approaching the gathering.

Taffyta - whose panicked state was further evidenced by her mascara-streaked face - darted her gaze back and forth between Vanellope and Calhoun. She and the others obediently kept their distance, but all began talking anxiously at once.

"Vanellope . . . what is going _on? _Where did the monster go!?"

"That was no monster, that was our _bad guy!_ Where's _Ralph, _Felix!? Is he okay!?"

"Madam President . . . th-that's the girl you brought to our game last Saturday! What happened to her!?"

"Forget _her_, what's happening to _Sugar Rush!?"_

"_And_ Fix-it Felix Jr.!"

"Everyone, _please . . . _one at a time! . . ._ " _Felix raised his hands wearily to try and calm the group, but their incessant stream of questions was becoming so loud and hysterical that he was all but drowned out under the clamor of their voices.

"What's happened to our game, Felix!?"

"What do we do now?"

"Has the virus been _stopped?"_

"What in the world is going on!?"

"SHUT UP! Everybody just _SHUT UP!" _Vanellope heard herself snap suddenly in a tone so venomous, her subjects - and the Nicelanders as well - immediately fell silent again. She knew they were only scared - and rightfully so_ . . . _she knew they had a right to know what was happening, and that she was being cruel and untoward and a terrible President to her own people . . . but at that moment, she genuinely didn't care.

With two fresh, silent tears rolling down her cheeks and her brow narrowed into an unfeeling line, Vanellope slowly turned her back on the small crowd and lifted her gaze to the Fix-It Felix Jr. portal. The golden arch of the entryway was now completely blocked off by an abrupt wall of darkness so thick and absolute, it almost looked solid . . . and above the gate, scrolling slowly across the title screen over and over in flashing red letters, were the words _DO NOT ENTER._

_Do not enter._

_**Do not enter**__._

Vanellope's hands clenched at her sides.

_No. _

_Right now, she didn't care the slightest bit about being a good President._

For a few moments, the cavernous station was filled with a tense, pregnant silence . . . then, there was a rippling murmur of surprise, and Vanellope looked back over her shoulder to see the SP Program Coordinator - now walking on her own, but outfitted with a pair of glowing blue crutches - hobbling determinedly toward them. The tightly packed crowd of characters and other surge protectors instinctively parted out of her way, and her face was darkened in a seething glare as she came to a stop at the edge of the circle.

"Well, _well . . . _why am I not surprised to see _you _three here?" she sneered with contempt. "You troublemakers have been at the bottom of this mess from the _beginning! _You sic your muscled goons on my staff . . . you break into a dangerous, _quarantined _game - thereby releasing the _very virus _the game was quarantined to con_TAIN . . . _and _now, _because of _you, _the survival of every single character in this arcade has been comp- "

But suddenly, the program coordinator stopped speaking in mid-sentence and did a sharp double-take as her gaze abruptly landed for the first time on Michelangela, whom Calhoun had been preoccupied with laying down on the station floor as slowly and gently as possibly, and whose head she was now propping cautiously on her lap. Mike's chest was still rising and falling with strained, shallow breath . . . but she had stopped making any audible sounds of pain, and the paper-whiteness that had come over her face was almost frightening to look at. The trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth had dried to a black crust.

For a few seconds, the program coordinator stared at Mike and Calhoun in dumbfounded shock . . . then, the righteous fury drained from her countenance and replaced with incredulity, she looked back at Vanellope and Felix.

"Wha . . . . what is going _on?"_ she demanded. "What is _she_ doing here!? What _happened _to her . . . what happened to the _virus!?"_

Before either of them could reply, Felix shot Vanellope and Calhoun a calm, reassuring glance and removed his hat as he approached the program coordinator.

"Please, ma'am . . . " he began softly, the weariness in his tone betraying the true extent of his emotional and physical exhaustion, despite his attempts to be strong. " . . . there's no need to panic. It's true . . . Miss Michelangela _was_ the one who brought the virus into the arcade . . . but it wasn't her fault. The virus was _using_ her, manipulating her without her knowledge - and then, it was transferred into our fr . . . our frie . . . " Felix paused, his voice choking briefly with an audible pang of grief so sharp it made Vanellope's eyes tear up again; " . . . our f-friend _Ralph . . . _we tried to remove the virus from his code manually, but . . . in the end . . . there was nothing else we could do. We initiated an emergency shutdown of Fix-It Felix Jr. in the hopes that it would delete the virus, and now it . . . _he . . . both _of them, are locked inside the game at this very moment. The arcade is safe . . . for now."

The SP program coordinator - along with all the other characters gathered around the gate - stared speechlessly for another moment, her mouth hanging open and her brow contorted in a baffled furrow. After a few seconds, she apparently gave up on trying to fill in all the missing pieces in her mind and shook herself, concentrating her attention back on Felix.

"Alright, then . . . " she muttered skeptically, hobbling a step closer toward the gate. " . . . _that _being the case, then _tell _me, Fix-It . . . if the game is shut down, just how are we supposed to _know_ whether the virus has been deleted or not?"

Felix hesitated, casting an anxious sideways at Calhoun and Mike, the latter of whom looked as if she was no longer minutes, but mere _seconds _away from slipping forever out of the world of the living . . . he opened his mouth uneasily to reply, but suddenly, before he could make another sound . . .

_BBBZZBZBBTTBPPPZZBBTT._

Vanellope's ears perked up as the air behind them was energized with a low, deep, electronic vibration that seemed to be emanating from the Fix-It Felix Jr. gate . . . she whirled around to look at it, and her tear-blurred eyes widened when she saw the red scrolling letters on the title screen abruptly vanish, and the words _GAME IN HIBERNATION MODE _appear in their place.

For a few seconds, she, Felix, Calhoun, the SP, and everyone else in the station stood stock still with baited breath and stared - expectantly, almost fearfully - into the pitch black gate.

Then, Vanellope saw it.

It was almost unnoticeable at first . . . just a tiny speck of electric blue light appearing suddenly in the very epicenter of the darkness . . . but before she had time to so much as draw another breath, the speck had both grown to fill nearly the entire golden archway and was rushing toward them with terrifying speed. The instant before it was upon them, Vanellope realized that it was not a single body of light, but hundreds of individual glowing serpents - just like the ones that had come out of Calhoun and Felix in the Masterwork internet tunnel - flowing together in an airborne river of electric blue.

Before any of them could move out of its way, the torrent of light burst out of the Fix-It Felix Jr. gate like floodwaters bursting from a dam, and for a moment Vanellope found herself completely blinded by it. The most perturbing thing was that the floating river made absolutely no sound as it rushed out of the game and filled the station with its garish blue glow, so that although she was unable see any of the others, she could hear their cries of alarm and confusion with perfect clarity.

For nearly three seconds of dumbstruck panic, the blue light consumed the atmosphere of the station entirely. Then, glimpses of floor and walls and other characters gradually became visible again as the stream of glowing worms began to disperse and thin out . . . and the next thing Vanellope knew, she was breathing hard and blinking once more in the golden light of the station as the last remaining lights flew and darted overhead. She looked up and realized that the blue worms had been disappearing down the mouths of the gates all around the station, and no sooner had she realized this than she happened to look in the direction of Calhoun and Felix just in time to see their personal worms plunging back into their chests and vanishing from sight.

The Fix-Its froze in unison, their eyes widening and their mouths gasping soundlessly for air. In the corner of her periphery, Vanellope saw fleeting glimpses of more blue worms phasing into each of the security-level surge protectors as well . . . but she barely gave them a passing thought. She was much too focused on what was happening to Calhoun and Felix to tear her jaw-dropped gaze away from them for even an instant.

As soon as the last traces of the writhing blue creatures had disappeared translucently into their chests, faint rims of white light began spreading rapidly over the Fix-Its' bodies. Vanellope stared in amazement as the light licked systematically over their heads, limbs, and torsos . . . and all of the damage that either of them had sustained during their fight with Ralph vanished before her eyes.

Calhoun's bleeding nose, banged up armor, and the several dark bruises disfiguring her face . . . Felix's singed face and clothing, and the red welts of the electrical burns covering his arms . . . in less than a second, all of it was erased as cleanly as if it had never been, leaving the two of them gaping down in stunned shock at their own perfectly restored bodies.

The next moment, the very last of the blue snakes finally disappeared from sight down one of the gates at the far end of the transit . . . and all at once, everything in the station was completely back to normal.

The SP program coordinator was gripping her crutches and staring off into space with her mouth hanging open as if she'd been hypnotized . . . the Nicelanders, the Sugar Rush citizens, and the rest of the surge protectors looked like a collection of stunned, wide-eyed wax manikins arranged in a crowded half-circle around the gate. For one long, seemingly frozen moment in time, a silence the likes of which Vanellope had never heard in Game Central Station permeated the air.

Calhoun was the first to recover her voice again . . . and when she spoke, the room was quiet enough for her soft, astounded murmur to be heard by everyone.

"It . . . . it _worked? _It actually _worked!?"_

His face a blank mask of absolute awe, Felix looked down at the backs of his own hands, the dark scorch marks now vanished from his yellow gloves.

"It _worked. _We've been completely reset," he said hollowly, as if not sure whether to be more shocked or euphoric at the discovery. "Does that . . . does that _mean . . . ?"_

The three of them exchanged a single glance . . . and then, with a raging burst of both excitement and apprehension erupting in her belly so fiercely it almost made her feel nauseous, Vanellope sprang at Felix like a cat and began shaking him fervently by the arm.

_"Test it!" _she cried frantically, half shrieking with urgency. "What are you waiting for? _Test it on me NOW!"_

She didn't have to tell him twice. Before she'd even finished speaking Felix had seized his gleaming hammer from its holster on his belt, the look of amazement in his wide blue eyes immediately replaced with a stare of utmost seriousness. With the hammer nearly shaking in his grip, he held Vanellope by the shoulder with his left hand, raised the golden apparatus above her head . . . and brought it down with a stiff, single _tap._

_Bid-a-ling!_

The effect was so instantaneous, it was already over before Vanellope could even fully register the happy, familiar, _beautiful_ sound of the three 8-bit notes accompanying the hammer-blow. With her heart leaping into her mouth and her breath quickening, she lifted one hand and rubbed the top of her head.

_It was gone. _

The painful, swollen lump that had been hiding underneath her hair since the altercation in Sugar Rush was completely, entirely gone.

Vanellope found herself unable to speak. She turned to look at Calhoun and Felix, who had been watching her with anxious, waiting stares . . . and nodded at them silently.

Without another word, Felix immediately darted to his wife's side and fell to his knees on the floor, leaning over Mike's pale body with his hammer drawn. Vanellope followed after him, dropping down on the opposite side and biting her lips together to keep from tearing up again at the sight.

Felix didn't delay another instant. He centered the hammer over Mike's sternum, the epicenter of the blow she'd received from Ralph's fist and the vertex of the internal damage to her body . . . raised it just a few, gentle inches into the air . . . and brought it down again.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_Bid-a-ling!_

The first thing that she consciously experienced . . . _before anything else, before any sight or touch or sensation, even before any sentient __**thought **__. . . _was a sound.

The instant after she realized she had heard it, she realized that she knew what it was, that she had heard it before . . . . and the instant after that, she was stricken with a feeling of déjà vu so intense, it was almost mentally paralyzing.

_I know that sound, _she thought, the words scrolling across the black surface of her mind as she gradually began to breathe regularly again, the pain that had been so excruciating as to block out every other facet of her consciousness abruptly gone as if it had never been.

_I . . . know that sound._

_I'm here. I exist._

_I'm . . . __**alive**__._

Mike opened her eyes.

Directly above her, three pairs of eyes stared back.

For a split second, they blinked at each other disbelievingly . . . then, like beams of sunlight creeping out from behind dark clouds, three enormous, speechless smiles spread simultaneously over the faces of Calhoun, Felix, and Vanellope.

Unspeakably relieved to see that each of them were alright . . . but still feeling somewhat too dazed and disoriented to yet remember exactly _why_ it was she should feel that way . . . Mike smiled weakly back at them, then sat up straight and looked around at each of them in turn.

"Hi, you guys," she said blankly, her voice dry and croaking from disuse.

"_MIKE!" _her three friends burst out joyfully in unison. Vanellope immediately threw herself at Mike's chest and hugged her neck savagely . . . Felix wrapped his arms around her shoulders from behind . . . Calhoun clapped one hand roughly, but tenderly on the back of her head, beaming affectionately at her.

"_You, _my friend . . ." the sergeant muttered with a faint smile, ". . . are one _lucky _little dingbat."

"You're okay! . . . you're o_kay . . . _sweet mother of monkey milk, thank _goodness _you're _OKAY!_ We all thought you were _done _for, Chickadee!" Vanellope was chattering gratefully, her voice half muffled in the front of the smock. Still too overwhelmed to say anything more to them yet, Mike just shut her eyes and allowed herself to sink deep down into the embraces encircling her on all sides. She closed her arms around Vanellope's small back and let her face rest wearily in the crown of dark, sweet-smelling hair . . . and for one warm, blissful, silent moment, everything was right with the world.

And then . . . all at once, without any warning, like an unprompted geyser of memory and fear and heartache welling up from the depths of her mind . . . it all came rushing back to her.

Mike froze.

Slowly, with her brow furrowing in a deep, sudden line, she opened her eyes and lifted her head.

She turned and looked over her shoulder at the dark, foreboding entrance of Fix-It Felix Jr., and immediately a whirlwind of half-remembered, half-dreamed snatches of conversation came rising up out of the interminable fuzziness of the past fifteen minutes . . . things that she must have physically _heard_ the others saying after she'd been hit by Ralph's fist, but had been unable until that moment to consciously register.

"_Her . . . her insides are . . . are . . . she's . . . b-bleeding internally . . . she . . . she can't last . . ."_

"_I . . . I did this. I did this . . . what have I done? __**I **__did this . . ."_

"_There's . . . there's still one thing we haven't tried. One thing that might . . . just __**might**__ . . . be able to remove the virus from your code, and return the information it stole."_

" _. . . Whatever it is, Calhoun, I'll do it! I'll do __**ANYTHING**__! What __**is **__it!?"_

"_We initiate an emergency shutdown of Fix-It Felix Jr. . . . with __**you inside the game**__."_

_With __**Ralph **__inside the game._

"_No one knows what happens to a character locked in emergency shutdown . . . but there's a slim chance that when the game goes into hibernation, the virus will be ejected from Ralph's code and unable to survive on its own. Everyone's powers would be restored, and Felix could fix Michelangela before she . . . before it's __**too late**__."_

Slowly . . . with her gaze never once leaving the wall of featureless, impenetrable black that filled the Fix-it Felix Jr. entrance . . . Mike gently eased Vanellope off her lap and rose to her feet, Felix and Calhoun's hands lifting from her unquestioningly. She took a few soft, padding steps toward the gate, then stopped.

For what felt like one long, endless moment of heartbreak . . . but was in reality only a few short seconds . . . she just stared blankly into the darkness.

Mike felt her eyes stinging and the breath struggling in her chest, but for some reason the tears refused to come, and in their place was nothing but a raw, unquenchable pain . . . a pain so deep inaccessible that the blind, semi-conscious agony of her physical wounds had been almost tame in comparison.

_Ralph._

_He had done it._

_He had finally gotten rid of the virus, once and for all . . . just like he had sworn he would, back in the third story room of her house, in that moment that felt so indescribably long ago._

_He had done it. He had sacrificed everything for them . . . for __**her**__._

_**Ralph**__._

Mike squeezed her eyes shut against the dry, intolerable burning and closed one hand into a fist over her chest. Her jaw clenched so tightly it trembled, and as much as she wanted to, she was unable to make herself say his name aloud.

After another moment of silent grief, she cleared her throat faintly and turned to look back at the others. They had risen to their feet and were watching her mournfully - it was clear from their expressions that they needed no words to understand what she was thinking. Beyond them were countless faces of other characters - many of whom she recognized from Sugar Rush, but just as many others who were strange to her - looking on anxiously in grave, perplexed silence . . . but at that moment, she had not even the slightest consideration to give them. They may as well have been cardboard faces on the background of a stage.

When Mike finally spoke again, her voice was even hoarser and emptier than before.

"What . . . what do we do now?"

Vanellope looked miserably down at her feet, and Calhoun and Felix exchanged despondent glances.

"I'm afraid . . . there's nothing we _can _do, Mike. Nothing except _wait_," Felix answered quietly. "We all have our abilities back, so the virus _must _have really been deleted in the shutdown . . . but . . . until Litwak comes back to the arcade and restarts the game, there's . . . there's just . . . no way of _knowing . . . _"

He trailed off hollowly, his gaze lowering to the floor.

The stinging in her eyes and heart intensifying by the second, Mike turned wretchedly back to the dark gate, and found that she couldn't even bear to look at it again. She squeezed her eyes shut and hung her head, as if trying to curl in on herself and make all of it disappear.

_It's not fair, _she heard herself whispering in the emptiness of her own mind. _It's not __**fair**__._

_He saved me. He saved __**all **__of us. He doesn't deserve this . . ._

_Please._

_Please . . . . __**please **__. . . ._

_Just let him be alright. Just let us see him again . . . _

_. . . let __**me **__see him again . . ._

_**Please **__. . ._

And then, almost the very next moment . . . like a dove descending from heaven, like an answer to a silent prayer . . . Mike suddenly heard Vanellope gasping in shock behind her.

"Look! LOOK! You guys, _look at the GATE!"_

Mike shot her eyes open . . . and immediately covered her open mouth with her hand.

She didn't have to turn and look at them to know that the others standing behind her were staring at the game gate with the exact same expressions of shock as herself . . . their baffled silence laid it in her minds' eye as clearly as a mirror.

All at once . . . without any visible cause, and for no perceivable reason whatsoever . . . .

. . . _the darkness in the Fix-It Felix Jr. entrance was dissolving._

Before their very eyes, the impenetrable blackness of the shutdown that had consumed the plug gate and the anteroom beyond was itself disappearing . . . like smoke clearing from a room or fog dispersing from a meadow, the darkness grew steadily thinner and more transparent until all of a sudden it was entirely gone, and they were staring straight down the golden hallway into the entrance of the game.

The title screen above the arch blipped, went dark . . . and then, as calmly and quietly as if the whole nightmare had never happened at all, the words _Fix-It Felix Jr. _began to scroll repeatedly from right to left across the board once more.

For another second, the entire station was deathly, incredulously silent . . . then, intrigued murmurs began circulating through the crowd, and Mike heard Felix stammering out behind her . . .

"Th-that . . . that can't _be! _That's im_possible! _The game was shut down . . . it was shut _down _. . . h-how? _How . . . !?"_

But even as he spoke, the pitch of Felix's voice was rising higher and higher with elation, his mystified questions not truly seeking any answer . . . until finally, he and Vanellope both burst out with simultaneous, laughing ejaculations of disbelief, and Mike - who had just stood rooted to the spot, staring at the Fix-It Felix Jr. gate with her heartbeat pounding harder and harder in her throat - heard three pairs of footsteps rushing up behind her. Her hands were seized by Felix on the left and Vanellope on the right as they ran past her and pulled her along with them, Calhoun quickly sprinting into the lead and motioning to them with one arm.

"_Come on!" _she shouted needlessly, her gruff voice lit up with more hope and unaffected wonder than Mike had ever before heard her express.

Feeling as if she were moving in a delirium of anticipation almost too intense to bear, Mike forced her feet to pick up speed and obediently ran along with the others as they raced through the anteroom, past the blue train on the platform, and plunged into the tunnel without once looking back.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Between the moment that the last remaining glimpse of Artemisio's face had vanished in front of him, and the moment he realized that everything around him was suddenly growing darker - that the brick-paved walls and floor of his mind, and even the furthest ends of his own hands and feet were gradually being obscured from view by the creeping, diffuse edges of an almost liquid-like shadow - Ralph had no way of calculating how much time had elapsed.

Indeed . . . trapped within the surreal confines of his own consciousness, with the echo of Artemisio's cryptic speculations still lingering like smoke in the air, he wasn't even certain anymore whether time really existed. The only thing he knew was that one minute, he was shaking hands with and saying farewell to a person whom, in technical terms, he couldn't really be said to have met at all . . . and the next, everything was suddenly becoming dim . . . and along with the dimness there was stealing over him a sort of vague, but irresistible fatigue.

The shadows began creeping over his body like living blankets, heavy and silent and suppressing. His eyelids drooped with a strange, indescribable exhaustion that was neither mental nor physical - and knowing that, when it really came down to it, there wasn't anything he could do to fight it, anyway - Ralph calmly sat down cross-legged once more on the floor of his mind, closed his eyes, and wearily allowed the darkness to roll over him.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As the dim light at the end of the Fix-It Felix Jr. tunnel drew near, Mike, Vanellope, Felix and Calhoun all slowed in unison to a brisk walk, their footsteps and panting echoing in the dark passage. Even as they came out into the open air of the game and moved to stand on the train station platform, none of them spoke . . . the invisible mantle of both anticipation and fear hung over them too heavily for words. It wasn't until they had stood there catching their breath and gazing over the landscape before them in abject awe and confusion for a full half-minute that Felix finally broke the silence.

"I just . . . I just don't under_stand _it," he muttered incredulously, shaking his head as pushed up the brim of his hat for a better view. "How? How in _heaven's name _did the game restart?"

"What do you mean, _how? _How else!? It had to be _Ralph!"_ Vanellope insisted eagerly, grabbing Mike's hand in her own and tugging her fervently towards the edge of the platform. "He must have restarted the game from the inside somehow . . . which means he's o_kay, _and he's got to be around here somewhere! _Come on, _we've got to go _find him!"_

In the corner of her eye, Mike saw Felix and Calhoun exchange skeptical, uneasy glances . . . but before she could say or do anything else, Vanellope had pulled her stumblingly down to the grass and run ahead toward the center of the game, and Mike found herself automatically hurrying after her.

Perhaps it was the trauma of her near-death experience still lingering hazily in her consciousness . . . or perhaps it was simply the nearly unbearable urgency of finding Ralph again, of finding out what had really happened to him during the shutdown . . . but whatever the reason, Mike was utterly dismayed to find that as she followed Vanellope along the grassy hills toward the apartment building, the primary feeling balling up in the pit of her stomach was not excitement, or even cautious optimism. It was _dread._

All around them, the landscape of Fix-It Felix Jr. had been completely restored by the shutdown. The apartment building stood tall and flawless in the center of the game, the surrounding lawn and trees as green and manicured as the night she'd first seen them . . . the air was cool and peaceful, the yellow stars shining obligingly in the black corkboard of the sky . . . there wasn't a single scar, scorch-mark, or fragment of rubble to be seen anywhere. Every last trace of the damage from their horrific battle against the virus was gone . . . and yet_ . . . ._

_. . . _and _yet . . ._

. . . and yet, as Mike moved numbly along, she was somehow no longer able to summon even the smallest trace of elation or relief. Something unseen and indiscernible was hanging in the atmosphere like a shroud, dampening her spirits and filling her with the growing certainty that _something _in the game was wrong . . . terribly, unspeakably _wrong_.

Then, as the four of them rounded the next hill and came into full view of the central region of the game, Vanellope skidded to a startled halt on the grass.

"Hey, _what the_ . . . E-East Niceland . . . it's . . . it's _gone!" _she sputtered in surprise as Mike and the others caught up to her. "Look . . . the neighborhood, the brownstones, Ralph's _shack _. . . they're all gone!"

The grim, sinking feeling in Mike's chest grew even heavier as she slowly scanned her eyes across the dark expanse of lawn and trees. The jarring absence of Ralph's cottage from the landscape hit her with a pang of trepidation like a punch in the gut.

"Of course_ . . . _this is what the game was like before we took in Q*bert and fixed up the dump," Felix muttered. "The emergency shutdown must have wiped the entire game all the way back to its _factory _settings . . . "

"Then where's _Ralph!?" _Vanellope cried, a sharp panic creeping into her voice.

The four of them scanned the landscape rapidly with their eyes, Mike feeling more and more consumed by dread with each passing second . . . until suddenly, Calhoun let out a loud grunt of satisfaction and pointed with one hand up into the midst of the enormous brick piles looming several dozen yards to their left.

_"There! _I see him!" she exclaimed, hurrying immediately towards the dump and motioning for the others to follow.

Her heart pounding in her ears like a drum, Mike narrowed her eyes in the direction Calhoun had pointed as they ran . . . and everything inside of her gave a tremendous, shuddering leap when she caught a faint glimpse of spiked auburn hair and orange-clad shoulders, just barely peaking out from among the dim rises of brick. Her eyes clouded up almost instantly.

_Ralph . . . __**Ralph **__. . . ._

_He's here . . . he's __**alive **__. . . ._

"Ralph! _Ralphie!" _Vanellope was shouting joyfully, her voice catching with the threat of deep-throated sobs. "It's us! We're _coming!"_

Within seconds, they had scaled over the first summit of the brick hill and found themselves in a shallow, slightly sunken landing in the middle of the dump . . . and quite suddenly, without any fanfare or ceremony, there he was.

There was Ralph, sitting in front of them plain as day, with his lower half hidden inside the hollow trunk of the tree stump in which he was sitting, and his arms folded calmly over the edge. He - just like everything else in the game - had at last been restored to his old self again . . . gone were his glowing blue eyes, tattered and paint-stained clothing, grotesquely swollen muscles and gargantuan height. He was him_self _again . . . just sitting there, looking to Mike every bit as sweet and genuine and unassuming as he had the night he'd first come knocking on her front door.

Mike couldn't move. She was paralyzed with joy, the dread that had been filling her pushed down out of memory and overwhelmed by the sheer, delirious happiness of seeing Ralph . . . the _real _Ralph . . . alive and well and before her eyes once more. For a single moment, she and others just stood frozen in place a few yards away from him, staring in a combination of delight and awestruck silence. Then . . .

"_RALPH!"_

Vanellope's rapturous cry broke out like a musical note, and the four of them snapped from their trances and rushed toward the hunched figure of their friend all at once, laughing and gasping and repeating his name in paroxysms of breathless relief.

Vanellope, unsurprisingly, was the one to reach him first . . . she launched herself through the air like a mint-colored rocket and landed haphazardly on the top of his crossed arms, throwing herself around his neck and hugging him so fiercely that her face was completely hidden beneath the curve of his jaw. In spite of her own desperate desire to do the very same thing, Mike forced herself to hold back and let Vanellope have the first moment with him alone . . . and indeed, the sight of the two of them reunited at last was enough to fill her heart with so much warmth that a thick, heavy lump of emotion was already forming in her throat. She smiled tearfully, and - almost without realizing she was doing it - slipped her arm around the small of Calhoun's back, hugging the taller woman to her side as she watched them . . . and for once, Calhoun didn't express even the faintest squeamishness at being touched.

"Oh, _Ralph . . . _am I ever glad to see _you!" _Felix cried elatedly, jumping up and laying one hand warmly on his antagonist's arm. "You _did _it, brother! You beat the _virus!"_

"I thought I was never gonna _see _you again, Stinkbrain!" Vanellope laughed, half-sobbing with relief as she finally loosened her hold around his neck and leaned back to look him in the face. "I thought for _sure_ you were going to be - "

And then . . . as Vanellope looked Ralph straight in the eye for the first time . . . she stopped dead in mid-sentence.

Mike blinked in surprise and looked up. All of a sudden . . . like an arrow zinging out of nowhere and piercing her chest . . . the horrible weight of dread reappeared. There was a moment of terrible silence . . . and within that moment, the slowly waning smiles on each of their faces disappeared.

As the blind euphoria of finding Ralph in one piece again evaporated, her head growing clearer and her thoughts slowing to an almost frightened crawl, Mike leaned in to take a closer look at his face . . . and felt as if all of her insides had instantly vanished. Her mouth opened slowly in a silent gasp of horror.

"W-what's . . . what's wrong with him?" Calhoun demanded abruptly, in a hoarse tone of alarm that sent a shuddering rippling down Mike's spine.

No one answered. The four of them stared at him in silent, dawning comprehension, suddenly seeing him clearly for the first time since they'd arrived.

They had each realized - all at once and with a cold, horrible abruptness - that not only had Ralph not yet spoken a single word to them . . . he hadn't even _moved_. He hadn't so much as flinched when Vanellope had thrown her arms around him . . . and now, despite the fact that she was hovering just a few inches in front of his face, he didn't appear to be aware of her presence at all. His eyes were dark, empty, and motionless. His expression was of utter, inexorable boredom - as if he were not only completely disinterested with everything around him, but had lost even the _capacity _for interest itself - and he was staring listlessly forward, looking straight through Vanellope as if she were invisible.

"R . . . _Ralph?" _Vanellope said hollowly, tapping her small hand once on his cheek, and growing visibly more anxious when she elicited no response. "Hey . . . Ralph . . . _Ralph! _What's the matter with you? Wake _up!"_

She shook him vigorously, but he didn't so much as bat an eyelid. Vanellope's shoulders tensed, and her voice suddenly went shrill with panic.

"Come on, Ralph, this isn't _funny! STOP IT!"_

She shook him again . . . and this time, unexpectedly, he moved. The four of them each sucked in a simultaneous gasp of surprise as Ralph abruptly shifted his right arm . . . but his eyes and face remained as bored and unresponsive as before, and Mike felt the glimmer of hope drain immediately back out of her again as she watched him - in one flat, emotionless gesture - raise his right hand, clamp it over Vanellope's face, and push her back down to the ground without looking at her. He folded his arms again and resumed his hunched, rigid posture over the rim of the stump.

Vanellope landed, stunned but unhurt, with a tiny clatter on the bricks below . . . and for several seconds, she just sat there and blinked up at him, too shocked to move. When she finally spoke, her voice was thick with confusion and tears.

"What . . . what _happened to him? _Why is he . . . ?"

Her face stony and her vanished insides now returning with the consistency of cold lead, Mike leaned over and gently helped Vanellope onto her feet. For her, the terrible shock of the discovery had already passed, leaving her now with nothing but a helpless, inescapable grief.

_This._

_This was what she'd sensed when they came back into Fix-It Felix Jr._

_This was what was wrong._

_It was as if . . . deep down . . . she'd somehow known that it was coming, all along . . ._

"Ralph? _RALPH!" _Felix was shouting desperately, hopping up and down and waving both hands in front of his face. "Ralph, can you _hear me!? Say _something!_"_

"Wake up, _junk pile!" _Calhoun snarled, the rising panic evident beneath her bristling anger. "This is _not _how this is going to end! You don't _GET _to just _cop out on us like this!" _She reared back one arm and slapped him clean across the face. Mike and the others flinched . . . but Ralph's head just jerked numbly to one side, hung there for a few seconds, then simply turned back to face forward again. His eyes were like two dark, stagnant pools staring out unblinkingly at nothing.

Calhoun breathed heavily through bared teeth for another few seconds, her hand trembling as it lingered in the air . . . and then, like a wave breaking unstoppably against the shore, the futility of their efforts washed visibly over her, and her eyes widened in defeat. An instant later, the same wave of devastation rolled over the rest of them, and for a long moment they went silent again.

_"He's not going to wake up," _Mike heard a pale, detached voice whispering hollowly, and realized shortly afterward that it was her own.

"The . . . the shutdown," Calhoun stammered emptily. "It . . . erased all of his memories . . . ?"

"No. Not his memories," Felix answered, sounding as if he were miles and miles away from them. "It erased . . . _him. All of him. _His . . . his m-mind_, _his thoughts . . . his _heart . . . _he's . . . he's just a shell of code, now . . . he's nothing but a _body_ . . . "

"NO! _NO!_" Vanellope screamed raggedly, lunging forward and grabbing Ralph's hand in both of her own, whipping her head back and forth in denial and sobbing hysterically as she shook him with her all her might. "It's not true! He can't be! He _CAN'T BE! __**WAKE UP**__, RALPH! WAKE __**UP**__!"_

She threw the entire weight of her body again and again against his hand, jostling him as much as she possibly could . . . but it was no use. Ralph didn't so much as glance down at her.

With a shuddering, heart-breaking cry that seemed to echo with finality in the stillness of the game, Vanellope finally gave up and collapsed to her knees beside the stump. She covered her face with her hands and wept uncontrollably.

Calhoun stared at Ralph a moment longer with an unreadable expression on her face . . . clenched her hands into fists . . . then let out a horrible sound that was halfway between a furious growl and a moan of pain. She stormed over to the edge of the hill and turned her back on them, and from the droop of her head and subtle trembling of her shoulders, Mike knew that she was crying silently.

Felix hung his head until the brim of his hat hid his eyes completely from view. A gleaming tear rolled down his face and dripped from his chin as he quietly put his hands on Vanellope's shoulders and eased her back up to her feet.

"No. _No. _He can't be. He _can't be," _she was muttering senselessly over and over again to herself as tears streamed continually down her reddening cheeks. "Have to do something . . . have to _do _something . . . "

"Shhhh," Felix tried to whisper to her comfortingly, but it was obvious from the way he stood and moved that he was too consumed by his own grief to truly do anything to lessen hers. "There's nothing we can do, Vanellope. He's . . . _he's as good as gone, now."_

The two of them staggered a short distance away and stood there, Vanellope's ceaseless sobs and gasps muffling into Felix's shirt as he hugged her and kept his own cries determinedly silent.

Throughout the entire scene, Mike had stood back from the others and watched them wordlessly. She felt as if her body had been encased in stone . . . her heart throbbed achingly in her chest, but the tremor of its pulses never spread past the limits of her ribcage. The rest of her was as numb and cold and heavy as the limbs of a statue. The pain that welled up behind her eyes as she watched Vanellope and Felix and Calhoun was almost too much to bear . . . and yet no matter how badly they stung at her, the unshed tears refused to fall.

Mike stared at the three of them a moment longer in hollow silence . . . then mechanically, almost unfeelingly - as if she were no longer inside of herself at all, but watching herself from somewhere far away - she turned and looked at Ralph.

She walked forward until she was standing directly in front of him, looking up into his bored, mindless, emotionless, half-lidded eyes.

He didn't look back at her.

The world of Fix-It Felix Jr. surrounding them was dark, casting Ralph and herself and the brick piles of the dump in a shadowy dimness . . . but even in the shadows, she could still make out the subtle, familiar shade of those brown eyes that would never look back at her again.

It was dark here. They had been shrouded in darkness the first time she'd seen them, too.

_KKRRAAABBOOOOOOOMM!_

_A deafening crash of thunder exploded outside, shaking the walls of the house, and in the midst of its earth-shattering roar she had cried out, squeezed her eyes shut, and flung open the upper half of the door._

_With her teeth clenched as if bracing for a terrible impact, and the paintbrush thrust forward in her shaking arms like a sword . . . she had slowly, fearfully, opened her eyes and looked up._

_A pair of small, brown, round eyes had blinked back at her._

_For a split second, they had stared blankly at each other._

_She had squeezed her eyes shut and screamed at the top of her lungs . . . and still screaming, she had reared back, lifting the paintbrush high over her head, and brought it swinging down in a slashing arch with as much force as she could muster._

_Ralph._

_**Ralph**__._

_From the very first moment they'd met, she had done nothing but cause trouble for him. From their first moment together, she had been hurting him - without even knowing it - and now . . . __**this**__ was where she had finally led him._

Mike's eyes grew cloudier and cloudier the longer she looked at him, the guilt and heartache stinging sharper and sharper each moment . . . but she refused to let herself turn away.

_It was her fault. All of it was her fault._

_**She **__had done this to him._

_The first person to ever show her kindness . . . the __**only **__person to ever care about her the way he had . . . and she had utterly ruined his life. She had turned him into __**this **__. . . this thoughtless, mindless, unfeeling husk of muscle and bone that no longer even recognized his closest and dearest friend._

_It would have been better if he had just let the virus take her instead. It would have been better if Litwak had pulled her plug and returned her defective game to the distributor as soon as the trouble began._

_It would have been better if she'd never been plugged in at all._

A full minute passed . . . and when, at long last, she could finally bear to look up at him no longer, Mike closed her eyes and let her head fall limply down to her chest.

Nearby, she heard the meek shuffling on footsteps on the bricks and knew that Calhoun, Felix and Vanellope were walking away down the side of the hill. There was nothing else left for them to do . . . there wasn't even a reason for them to say goodbye.

_Because of __**her**__._

She wanted to tell them . . . to tell _Ralph _. . . that she was sorry. She wanted to say aloud every one of the thoughts that had just passed through her mind . . . she wanted him to know everything that she had every thought about him, every passing glimmer of feeling and warmth and confusion and frustration and joy.

She wanted him to know that she would take his place if she could.

Mike squeezed her eyes shut tighter, her brow furrowing and her closed lips trembling. With the last ounce of strength she could summon, she drew in a breath, opened her mouth . . . _knowing miserably that no matter what she said, he wouldn't understand it - and determined to say it anyway _. . . and, without stopping to let herself hesitate for another instant, blurted out in a hoarse whisper the first words that sprang unthinkingly to her lips.

_" . . . I love you, Ralph."_

The hot, aching tears that had been gathering for so long finally fell, streaking down over her freckles in the shadowy darkness.

Without opening her eyes, reaching out blindly to brace herself on his arm with her hands, Mike rose up onto her tiptoes . . . found his face with her own . . . and kissed him.

She kissed him once - softly, silently, and shortly, on the mouth . . . and there, within the fleeting moment of contact, there was a single, small, familiar sensation of fluttering warmth, almost like something passing instantaneously between their lips. For a split-second, Mike was inexplicably transported back to the moment when Ralph had kissed her in the third-story room of their house, when he had taken the virus from her body into his own . . . but then, before she could begin to fathom why, it had already passed - the warmth was gone.

Slowly, reluctantly pulling her mouth away from his, Mike lowered back down to her heels and opened her eyes. Ralph was still staring blankly straight ahead. He hadn't moved an inch.

Her face contorted in a look of soundless grief, she raised her hand to his cheek to touch him . . . for the final time. She was unable to make herself speak again . . . but the words still blazed, like torturous lights, across the bleak darkness of her thoughts.

_Goodbye._

_Goodbye . . . Wreck-It Ralph._

Without another sound . . . without looking back again . . . Mike turned away, and began following the others slowly down the hillside.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_I love you, Ralph._

He sat, motionlessly, and stared ahead at nothing. The words echoed meaninglessly in his ears.

His eyes were dark.

_I love you, Ralph._

They were almost halfway down to the grass now.

Still nothing.

_I love you, Ralph._

Then . . . it happened.

It happened so suddenly . . . so quietly . . . that there was not even the smallest moment of transition between its beginning and its end.

One instant, the words meant nothing to him.

Then the _warmth . . . _the fluttering warmth that had passed from her to him through the contact of the kiss . . . sparked deep inside him once more, lit up everything with an instantaneous, dazzling explosion of life . . . then snuffed out.

It happened as quickly as completely as a light-switch turning on in his brain.

One instant, the words meant nothing to him . . . and the next, they meant _everything._

_I love you, Ralph._

His half-lidded eyes shot open, and before he had even turned his head to look at their retreating backs growing smaller and smaller down the hillside, he heard his own voice - soft, automatic, and filled with a strange kind of calmness that he had never experienced before in his life - answering back . . .

"I love you, too."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Mike stopped dead in her tracks.

The words . . . the words, in the familiar voice that her brain immediately insisted she could not possibly have heard, that she _must _have imagined . . . hung tangibly in the air behind her long after the soft resonance of their sound had faded.

_No._

_No._

_It can't be._

The tears still hanging from her eyes and staining her cheeks, Mike whirled around and looked back up the mound of bricks toward the stump . . . . and the numb, stony chamber encased around her heartbeat instant shattered.

Ralph was standing in front of his stump, one hand still braced on the rim as his feet settled down onto the bricks beneath them . . . and he was smiling at her. Shy glimmers of light were dancing in his eyes.

Mike stood rooted to the earth like a tree, her mouth hanging open and one hand lifted unconsciously in front of her chest. From the sounds of sudden gasping and sliding bricks behind her, she knew that Vanellope, Felix, and Calhoun had turned around and seen the same thing she had . . . but at that moment, she could scarcely even comprehend the existence of another living being apart from herself, and the gently smiling giant who planted both feet on the ground, held his arms out to her, and said . . . in the same gruff, warm voice she had heard so many times before, and yet sounded to her as new and clear as if everything she'd ever heard before it in her life had come from underwater . . . .

_" . . . . I love you too, Mike."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Ralph watched, his heart pounding in his chest and his hands held out open in front of him, as Mike covered her mouth with both hands, looking as she were about to begin sobbing hysterically any second . . . but she didn't.

What she did was take off like a shot back up the hill, bolt across the shallow landing of bricks at an absurd speed, and throw herself bodily through the air into his chest, hitting him with such momentum that he was knocked clean off his feet. The two of them sailed backward . . . were airborne for a split second . . . and then, _shthump! _He felt himself land, seat first, back in the opening of his stump, sliding in until he was helplessly stuck with his arms and legs hanging out over the rim.

Mike was lying on top of him, her hands fisted in the neck of his shirt . . . panting, her cheeks flushed, her hair flying wildly, staring inches away from his face with an indescribable marriage of joy, disbelief, and glimmering tears filling her brilliant green eyes.

They stared at each, smiling, and didn't say a single word.

For a few brief seconds, Ralph thought that it was possible he may never want to say another word again.

Mike's eyes brimmed over with intangible, but unmistakable wells of emotion, the last streaks of tears drying from her face . . . and the next thing Ralph knew, she had pulled herself up and wrapped her arms around his head, hugging him to her chest and burying her fingers almost aggressively into his hair. Without missing a beat, he closed his hand around the small of her back, squeezed his eyes shut, and held her so tightly that he had to mentally check himself before he bruised her ribcage with his fingers.

She finally spoke again . . . and the choked, throaty rasp of her whisper vibrating immediately beside him was the sweetest thing he could have wished to hear.

"Welcome back, Ralph."

He squeezed her close once more, then gently loosened his grip and eased her back down to the flat of his chest so that he could look her in the face.

"Good to _be _back," he whispered in reply, the faintest curve of a smile turning on his mouth.

Mike grinned back at him . . . and then, without another word, she pulled herself back up by his collar and crashed her lips into his.

Ralph closed his eyes . . . he kissed her back . . . and for a single, soundless moment of warmth and euphoric incredulity, nothing else in the world existed.

Then, he heard them . . . three voices he recognized instantly, shouting out in joyful unison and wrenching both he and Mike - only slightly unwillingly - back into reality.

_"RALPH!"_

Mike broke away from the kiss and rolled to her left side against his arm to crane her head back in the direction of the voices . . . and no sooner had the field of his vision been cleared than he looked up and saw Vanellope, virtually flying through the air straight toward him - her face red, tear-stained, and beaming with an indescribable paroxysm of happiness and disbelief - and Felix and Calhoun following immediately at her heels.

Ralph grinned, holding out his free hand to the tiny, rapidly approaching projectile that was his best friend . . . and the next second, he found himself buried beneath the small bodies of Vanellope, Felix and Mike as they swarmed him like a pack of kittens, savagely hugging whatever available part of him they could get their hands on.

"You're _back! You're back you're back you're back you're BACK! You're really BACK!" _Vanellope was giggling deliriously to herself over and over again, the constant stream of her voice cut off only when she stopped long enough to kiss him, all but squashing her entire face completely into his cheek. Almost too overcome with jubilation at seeing her again to keep his composure, Ralph swallowed the lump in his throat not-so-discretely and chuckled, nuzzling her small head between his temple and left shoulder.

"_Ha . . . _that's right, you little cavity . . . you didn't really think you were gonna get rid of me _that _easily, did you?"

"Oh, _Ralph! _Ralph, I can't believe it's finally _you!" _Felix had landed in the center of his stomach and was hugging him with his short arms spread to their full breadth over his chest, the bill of his cap hiding his face from view . . . but Ralph could tell from the choked tone of his voice that there were joyful tears welling in his eyes, and the sound was almost enough to make him go misty-eyed himself. In all the thirty-one years that Ralph had known him, he had never felt closer to his protagonist.

After almost a full minute of blissful, unashamed embracing and relieved exchanges of laughter . . . Ralph suddenly realized that something was missing. Looking up from the three people already snug in his arms, he saw Calhoun, standing between his feet at the edge of the stump with her arms folded around her torso, gazing over the sight in front of her with a beaming radiance of happiness that even she was unable to disguise. When her eyes met with Ralph's, a revealing shine glimmered once in their pale blue irises . . . and she smiled at him.

"About _time, _Wreck-It," she groused, in a completely unconvincing mutter of irritation. "I was getting awfully sick and tired of this whole routine. Some of us have other responsibilities to get _back _to, you know."

A beat of extra warmth pulsed out from Ralph's heart, and he laughed good-naturedly as he extended his right hand toward her.

"Shut up and get over here, Sergeant Sourpuss."

And then, immediately after he had said it . . . Ralph saw something that he had never seen before in his entire life, something that he had never in his wildest imagination dreamed he would _ever _see.

He saw a _blush . . . _a true, unmistakable _blush _of warm, rosy pink . . . bloom over Calhoun's cheeks. She cleared her throat somewhat sheepishly - looked around once, almost as if checking to see whether anyone was watching - and gingerly, reluctantly reached out to Ralph's hand with her own.

With a huge grin spreading on his face - and before she had time to change her mind - Ralph clamped his hand down around Calhoun's arm and gave her a short, powerful yank. She let out a small yelp of alarm as she was bodily pulled forward into the embrace . . . he closed her in with one hand behind her back, and she shot him one last half-hearted glare before finally melting into a smile and joining in with the others.

Vanellope let out a soft, long sigh of contentment as she wrapped her arms back around Ralph's neck.

_"Finally . . . _our whole family is back together again," she smiled audibly, burrowing down deeper into the group hug.

His heart stirring inside of him at her words, Ralph opened one eye and peered toward his opposite side, where Mike was still clinging tightly to him with her eyes shut and a look of smiling, utterly exhausted relief etched on her face. Her hair was tickling his forearm and the side of his jaw . . . with another soft, worn smile of his own, he nudged her in closer against his side and tightened his broad hold on all four of them.

_"You said it, kid_," he whispered.


	49. Chapter 48: Ready to Shine

**A/N: **EVERY ONE OF THESE FINAL CHAPTERS IS HARDER TO WRITE THAN THE ONE BEFORE.

But thank Molten Glory, this is the _last _actual chapter of the story . . . all we've got left now is the prologue, and compared to these beasts that's going to be a prancing cake walk in the heaps-of-fluff park. So let's all look forward to _that, _eh?

Just to warn you, though . . . I'm doing a bit of travelling next week, so the final _final_ installment might take a little longer. I really can't apologize to and thank you good people enough . . . YOUR AGONY IS ALMOST OVER, I PROMISE.

In the meantime, enjoy this last of the chapters proper. Illustrations for this chapter are posted on my dA. Hope you like it! *wheezes and sobs and rolls around on the floor*

_**Love Bug**_

_Chapter 48: Ready to Shine_

"Listen, gang . . . I don't want to be the one who has to look the gift-horse in the mouth, here, but . . . there's something about this whole business that's still bothering me."

Ralph turned to glance down at Felix, his protagonist's voice resonating timidly off the walls of the brick tunnel as the five of them were making their way back to Game Central Station.

"Yeah? What's that?" he murmured, with a somewhat amused smile hooking one corner of his mouth. He didn't mean to sound patronizing, but at that moment . . . walking side by side with Vanellope and the rest of his friends - the rest of his _family _- feeling like his old self again for the first time in ages, and with Mike's hand closed warmly inside of his own . . . worrying about _anything _seemed almost absurd.

"Well, it's just . . . for the _life _of me, I still can't figure out how in the world our game was restarted. It just doesn't make any gosh darn _sense_. Are you _positive _you didn't have anything to do with it, Ralph?"

Ralph opened his mouth to reply . . . then stopped, the words hesitating on his tongue as a jarring, unexpected thought suddenly flitted along the back rim of his mind. _What if . . . . could it be, that maybe . . . ._

_. . . __**he,**__ had something to do with it?_

_No . . . it was impossible, wasn't it? Ralph had __**seen **__him vanish into thin air in front of his own eyes . . . or in front of his __**mind's**__ eye, at least._

_But then . . . if it wasn't __**him **__. . . what other explanation could there be?_

Realizing that his pause was becoming awkwardly long, Ralph cleared his throat and tried to sound casual.

"Er . . . sorry, but . . . like I said, I can't remember anything. The whole space of time between the shutdown and the kiss is one big blank."

Felix sighed thoughtfully, and Calhoun patted him on the shoulder.

Ralph could almost taste the half-truth of the statement as it left his mouth, and he found himself stealing an uneasy sideways glance at Mike . . . but her contented, forward smile showed no sign of skepticism at his remark.

_" . . . If you do ever get out of here, Ralph . . . would you do me one favor?"_

_"Anything."_

_"__**Don't ever tell her about me.**__"_

Ralph frowned as he felt a small, tangible dark spot suddenly appearing on the previously unblemished face of his happiness.

_He had promised Artemisio that he would never tell Michelangela about him . . . but now that everything had been put right again and he was actually standing beside her, Ralph found himself floundering guiltily at the idea, wondering if he would really be able to go through with it after all. _

_Promise or no promise . . . was it really the right thing for him to deliberately keep the truth from her, forever? _

_Didn't she have a right to know?_

"Speaking of _which . . . " _Vanellope's sharp little voice, half serious and half jocular, echoed off the walls and brought him abruptly back to reality. " . . . I'll tell you what _I'd _like to know. Why the heck did one little face-suck from Mike bring vegetable-head here back to life, _anyway?" _she demanded, jabbing one thumb in Ralph's direction as they walked. "I mean . . . what kind of fairy-tale garbage is that? All Chickadee has to do is kiss the pumpkin, and he magically turns back into a Ralph?"

Mike's hand twitched lightly inside of his. An embarrassed flutter of warmth flushed around Ralph's jaw, and he was momentarily grateful for the dim light in the tunnel as he shot Vanellope a scathing look.

"Nobody asked _you, _you little - "

"No . . . _no_, she has a point," Mike cut him off. Ralph could almost hear the blush on her cheeks in the bashful way she cleared her throat. "And I think . . . I'm not _sure, _but I think . . . it must be because of the way Ralph took the virus from me in the first place, when he k . . . _kissed _me, up in the third floor of my house. I thought for a minute that I could almost feel something coming from inside of him_,_ trading places with the virus as it came out from inside of _me_ . . . and then, when we . . . you know, _again, _at the stump_ - _it was sort of like I just . . . gave it _back_ to him. That email about the Love Bug said that before it could steal information from the programs it found, it had to make _copies _of them, right? . . . well . . . when it first infected him, I think the virus must have made a copy of Ralph's program, too . . . but because _he_ was the transmitter, the copy wasn't stolen like everyone else's. So I guess . . . in its way . . . the Love Bug ended up being good for at least _one thing, _didn't it?"

At the close of her small speech, Ralph felt Mike's hand squeezing tighter around his thumb and glanced down to see her smiling shyly sideways at him.

The flush around his jaw glowing a touch warmer, he smiled back.

"Good for more than _one _thing," he murmured, almost forgetting for an instant that the others were walking on either side of them. "If it wasn't for it . . . I might never have met _you_."

At this, Felix let out a soft, almost dreamy sigh . . . Calhoun snorted lightly in an amused tone that clearly denoted an accompanying eye-roll . . . and Vanellope stuck out her tongue and pointed down her own throat with a stiff groan.

"_Bleeecch . . . _just gag me with a _spoon_, why don't you? Whatever, you two . . . program copy this, transmitter that . . . . all I heard was blah-dy blah blah, _magic kiss."_

The Fix-Its and Michelangela laughed . . . and after a final sour glance in Vanellope's direction, Ralph couldn't help cracking a smile and chuckling as well. Without any warning, he reached one arm around Mike's shoulders and plucked the little girl off the ground by the hood of her sweatshirt, he and the others laughing louder at her startled yelp as he swung her onto his shoulder. She _hmphed _gruffly and gave him a half-hearted punch on the cheek.

"Yeah, yeah . . . _yuk_ it up, big boy . . . but you and Tweedle-dee better learn to keep that mushy junk to a minimum while _I'm_ around. Remember who you have to thank for pushing your butt out the door and onto the lady prowl in the first place . . . don't make me live to _regret _it."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

With all the havoc and chaos that had been wreaked on the arcade in the past twenty-four hours . . . and especially now that everyone appeared to have had their abilities restored . . . Ralph had been fully expecting the fair-sized crowd which had gathered in Game Central Station.

What he would have never expected - _never, _not in a million years - was for them to start _applauding._

The five of them had no sooner emerged from the Fix-It Felix Jr. gate than Ralph heard a loud, husky voice shouting out from somewhere in the midst of the sizeable crowd filling the transit . . .

"IS THEM! Look, is _Wreck-It Ralph _and comrades!"

Ralph realized immediately after hearing it, of course, that the voice belonged to Zangief, and the next second he spotted the familiar figure of his Bad-Anon friend jumping down from one of the benches in the middle of the station and pushing his way toward them through the crowd . . . but his attention was quickly drawn to the dozens upon dozens of other characters who looked up, saw him and the others standing dumbly in front of the game gate, and . . . without any other provocation, practically in mass unison_ . . ._ actually began to _cheer._

Ralph's jaw dropped as countless recognizable faces - the Nicelanders, the Streetfighter cast, the Sugar Rush racers and citizens, Vikarella, Clyde and the other Pac-ghosts, Kohut, Janowitz, Markowski, and all the rest of Calhoun's men . . . Bowser, Nina Williams, Cynthia and a handful of the DDR avatars, Lamar the stegosaurus, Tapper, what looked like the entire staff of surge protectors, and too many others to name all at once - grinned and shouted and clapped at him from their places in the surrounding crowd.

For a few seconds, he just stood there speechlessly looking around at the unbelievable sight surrounding him . . . then, he was jolted abruptly out of his stupefied wonder by Zangief's burly, naked arms wrapping around him and squeezing him so tightly that his feet actually almost left the floor. Vanellope, who had still been sitting perched on his shoulder and surveying the applauding crowd in a shocked silence to match his own, let out a startled squawk and scrambled back down to the floor.

"Ha _HA! благодарю Бога_, is _you, _Wrecking Man! Zangief was afraid you and your friends had all gone home to big bonus level in the sky!"

Ralph opened his mouth to answer, but discovered that the over-zealous embrace had forced all the wind out of his lungs . . . it wasn't until the hulking wrestler finally let go and dropped him heavily back to his feet that he could suck in enough breath to speak.

"Zangief . . . what the . . . _what the . . . ?"_

"What the heck is all _this _about!?" Vanellope finished for him, gesturing incredulously to the crowd. "Why are they all clapping?"

_"Why? _Why - for heroes who risked their lives to save whole ar_cade, _of course!"

Ralph's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He shot questioning glances at Mike and the Fix-Its, who simply shrugged back at him.

"_Heroes? _But . . . Zangief, we're the ones . . . _I'm _the one, who caused all the trouble in the first pla - "

"No, _no . . . _is no good trying to be modest, Ralph!" Zangief laughed heartily, clapping him on the shoulder so hard he nearly stumbled forward. "SP program coordinator has already told us whole story . . . how Ms. Meekelangela accidentally brought virus into arcade, how _you _bravely took virus onto own shoulders, how friends worked together to trap virus in Fixing game and delete it once and for all! Thanks to you, malfunctions have all been repaired . . . Zangief is feeling strong enough to wrestle _five _bears with foot tied to elbow!"

The Russian brawler laughed again and pounded both fists once onto his chest . . . but Ralph wasn't looking at him. He was scanning the crowd rapidly with his eyes, then stopped suddenly when he spotted her . . . the SP program coordinator. She was standing in a loose group with the rest of her staff, talking to them excitedly and leaning heavily on her crutches . . . she happened to glance up in Ralph's direction, and for a moment, their gazes met.

He stared in disbelief as the program coordinator smiled at him . . . an actual, warm, _genuine _smile . . . shot him and the others standing by the gate a thumbs-up . . . then returned to her conversation.

Beside him, he heard a low, long whistle of amazement and glanced down to see Felix looking in the same direction, slowly shaking his head.

"What did I tell you, brother?" he said, with the hint of a smile. _"People can surprise you."_

By now, the crowd filling the station had stopped applauding and begun talking to their neighbors again in animated voices punctuated by gales of laughter from all sides, each of them eager to share the story of their own experience with the virus malfunctions and the closing of the arcade. The atmosphere of the transit was lighter and merrier than it had been in what seemed like ages, the overall tone of the humming chatter in the room that of high-spirited relief.

Still somewhat unwilling to separate from one another, but knowing that at least three of them had an inescapable responsibility to do so, the five of them exchanged a final look and nods of significance to one another before splitting apart and moving in different directions from the entrance of Fix-It Felix Jr. Felix made a beeline straight for the cluster of Nicelanders, Calhoun marched off to address her men ( all of whom seemed, Ralph noticed with a great exhale of relief, to have recovered fully from the injuries he'd unwittingly given them earlier that day ), and Vanellope - with a barely-concealed groan of exasperation - reluctantly trudged over to the mob of Sugar Rush citizens waiting for her near the courtesy benches.

Finding themselves quite suddenly alone together, Ralph and Mike looked at each other. Mike chewed her bottom lip slightly, and with a sudden pinkness on her cheeks which Ralph wasn't sure whether to attribute to self-consciousness amidst the crowd, or the very recently altered nature of their relationship ( everything had been so surreal and overwhelming that he almost hadn't stopped to think about it until that moment, but all at once he seemed to fully realize for the first time that he, the bad guy _Wreck-It Ralph_, had actually said to her those three little words that deep down, he had never consciously believed he would ever say to anyone . . . and when the delayed realization did hit him, it hit like a ton of bricks ) . . . she quietly slipped her hand back into his and inched closer to his side, reminding him warmly of the first time she'd ever ventured into another game besides her own, when she had hidden behind him repeatedly.

In spite of the tremendous panoply of emotions that had abruptly snuck up on him, Ralph couldn't help but smile and close his hand responsively around hers. Neither of them spoke . . . at the moment, there seemed to be nothing they needed to say. For several minutes, they just stood quietly together beside the entrance of Fix-It Felix Jr. and looked out at the throngs of happily conversing characters.

Then, suddenly, Ralph noticed in the corner of his eye that one of the nearby characters seemed to be making his way toward them through the crowd . . . but it wasn't until he had pushed his way through a lanky gaggle of 3 on 3 Dunk Masters basketball players that Ralph realized who it was.

Johnny Cage, looking slightly out of breath and wearing an unreadable expression behind his black sunglasses, hesitated for a moment at the edge of the crowd before shuffling awkwardly up to Ralph and Mike, who both just stared at him blankly in surprise.

There were a few nonplussed seconds of the single most awkward silence Ralph had ever experienced in his life. Then, finally, Johnny coughed lightly and removed his sunglasses, and he was shocked to see an authentically apologetic gleam in the Mortal Kombat fighter's eyes.

"Um . . . yyyeeahh . . . ah, hi . . . h-hi there, Wreck-It. Ang - I mean . . . Michelangela."

Oddly tongue-tied, Ralph said nothing, but shot a sideways glance at Mike, who had subtly moved an inch or two closer to him the moment Johnny had approached them.

"Mr. Cage," she muttered curtly, her brow narrowing in disdain.

Johnny nodded, his gaze darting down to the floor between his feet. "Yeah . . . so, ah . . . some crazy jazz with this virus and all, huh?"

"What do you _want?" _Mike snapped - in what was, for her, an alarmingly cold tone.

Johnny fumbled visibly over the words for a moment. "Well, I . . . I just wanted to . . . I heard the story from the old blue-hair over there, about . . . about what you _did, _taking on the virus and all, and I . . . well . . . I just wanted to tell you that . . . what you did . . . what you did took a lot of _guts, _Wreck-It."

Ralph and Mike both started in unison, blinking with bald astonishment. Ralph's eyes grew even wider as Johnny suddenly extended one hand toward him, his face turned aside with obvious embarrassment.

"And . . . I also wanted to tell you, _both_ of you, that . . . I'm _sorry . . . _you know, about what went down between us in Street Fighter? This whole, crazy malfunctioning episode has made me . . . you know, made me _think _about a few things, and . . . the way I acted that night . . . it wasn't cool. The Cage is better than that."

He and Mike exchanged short, mildly flabbergasted looks . . . and, not knowing what else to do, Ralph reached out and cordially shook the muscular hand that was offered to him.

"Um . . . _gee, _I don't know what to . . . well . . . _thanks, _Johnny."

The tattooed fighter flashed his teeth in reply, then replaced his sunglasses and began meandering awkwardly back toward the crowd.

"Oh . . . and Wreck-It?" he paused, calling back over his shoulder. "Any time you want some _sparring_ pointers, you come on over to Mortal Kombat, hear? Mi console es _su _console, big guy. You take care, too, Angi - _Mich_elangela."

With that, Johnny Cage slipped seamlessly back into the throng, leaving Ralph and Mike standing alone once more and blinking in dazed astonishment.

"I'll be honest . . . I did _not _see that one coming," Ralph muttered blankly.

Mike nodded slowly in agreement, but when another moment passed and she didn't say anything, Ralph turned to look at her, and was dismayed to see a concerned furrow knitting her brow.

"Mike? What is it?"

Her frown deepened and took on a more sorrowful tilt.

"Oh . . . it's just . . . something he said, it just . . . re_mind_ed me."

"Reminded you of what?"

She looked back up at him and smiled sadly. "Reminded me that Masterwork is gone . . . that I don't have a console of my _own_, anymore."

Ralph half-froze, his spirits plummeting. Amidst all the chaos of the virus, he had entirely forgotten that Masterwork had been deleted clean out of existence. A knot of guilt twisted his insides, and he immediately put one arm around Mike's back and pulled her into a consolatory hug.

"Oh, _man . . . _I'm . . . I'm so _sorry, _Mike, I completely forgot . . . "

She hugged him back appreciatively, but shook her head at the same time.

"No . . . no, it's okay. I've got nothing to be sad about, Ralph . . . _you're _safe, Vanellope and the Fix-Its are safe . . . the ar_cade _is safe. . . everything is going to be alright. I was the only character who lived in Masterwork, anyway . . . if _any _game had to be deleted by the virus, I'm glad it was the one without any other . . . "

But then, Mike trailed off in mid-sentence, her body going rigid as if something truly awful had suddenly occurred to her. She pulled back from Ralph's arms, and when she looked up at him there was a startling flash of utter panic written on her face.

_"Sugar Rush!" _she cried fiercely, her voice almost trembling and her hands fisting in the front of his shirt. Those two words alone dropped a stony weight of dread into the bottom of his stomach as the blurred, hazy memory of all the damage he'd done to Vanellope's game came rushing back to him. "Ralph . . . we forgot about _Sugar Rush! _You had already released the kill code _hours _before the virus was deleted . . . what if it . . . what if the game already . . . ?"

Ralph found himself stammering helplessly to try and think of something reassuring to say to her, even as his own hopes began sinking lower and lower . . . but mercifully, at that very moment as if on cue, Vanellope herself suddenly came hurrying back to them from across the station.

_"Vanellope!" _Mike gasped, dropping to her knees and seizing the little girl by the shoulders so fervently she yelped in alarm. "What happened? Is your game _still there!?"_

"Geez, _geez, _Chickadee . . . take it _down _a notch, for crying out loud!" Vanellope muttered, extricating herself gingerly from Mike's clinging hands. "That's what I came over here to _tell_ you . . . Sugar Rush is _fine. _After everyone got their powers back from the virus, Sour Bill went straight back to check on our game, and he says the place looks perfec t. . . well, I mean, not _literally _perfect . . . the roads are still smashed and the raceway is ruined and the karts are totaled and the town is covered in paint . . . but there's no gaping hole in the program, and no trace of the kill code _anywhere."_

Ralph and Mike listened eagerly to Vanellope's speech with their mouths open, and when she finished they both breathed a heavy, simultaneous groan of relief.

"Oh, my _word," _Mike gasped, closing her eyes and holding her forehead. "For a minute there, I was _. _. . _well_ . . . thank goodness, the kill code must not have had a chance to spread through the whole game before it was deleted. If it _had_ . . ."

_"Wwweeeelll . . . _I'm not ex_actly _sure if that's what happened," Vanellope murmured thoughtfully, making them look at her in surprise.

"What? Why do you say that?" Ralph demanded perplexedly. "What else _could _have happened?"

"See . . . here's the thing . . . I've actually got more than _one _piece of good news to share, but we've gotta find the Fix-Its first. Follow me."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Less than ten minutes later, once they had regrouped with Calhoun and Felix and made their way through the gradually thinning crowd over to the other side of the station, Mike found herself standing once more beneath the familiar golden archway that had been the entrance to Masterwork. She had her head craned back, staring up at the title screen above the gate . . . and her mouth was hanging open in a silent paroxysm of disbelief.

"It can't be," she half-whispered to herself, narrowing her eyes and shaking her head back and forth ever so slightly. "It just . . . it _can't be."_

_But it was._

There, scrolling calmly in brightly lit letters from left to right across the title screen - the screen which, by all rights and reason, ought to have been nothing now but an empty black rectangle - was the word _Masterwork. _Beyond the plug passage in the dim light of the anteroom, she could see the little stairs and platform leading up to what should have been nothing but an impenetrable wall of rubble . . . but what lay before her instead was the plain, dark opening of the Masterwork tunnel, every bit as perfectly intact as she remembered it from before the whole nightmare began.

Calhoun, Felix, and Ralph were standing beside her with wide-eyed expressions of amazement that almost matched her own . . . Vanellope was looking back and forth between the four of them and beaming like a ray of sunshine.

"Alright . . . al_right," _Felix barked suddenly. "Maybe - just _maybe - _I could gloss over our game mysteriously restarting itself somehow, but _this . . . _this figure just _does not _compute. Masterwork was _destroyed. _We all _saw it _destroyed. The virus didn't just copy and steal a few bits of code from this game . . . it completely _deleted _it! How in the name of Nin_tendo _could it possibly be here again!?"

Vanellope only grinned and chuckled out loud at his incredulity.

"Your guess is as good as mine, Fix-It . . . all I know is what Adorabeezle told me she saw. The minute before those blue virus worm-thingies exploded out of the gate, the Masterwork title screen was dark . . . and the minute _after, _it was lit up again."

"I don't like this," Calhoun muttered distrustfully. "If this game really _is _up and running again, then how do we know it isn't because some part of the virus survived inside its code?"

"I guess there's no way to tell for sure, unless we go in and check it out,"Ralph murmured. "I don't know - what do you think, Mike? . . . _Mike?"_

She had barely been listening to them. Their words had filtered mutely in and out of her ears as she stared forward, utterly transfixed, at the unobstructed entrance to the home she had convinced herself she would never see again . . . until suddenly, Ralph nudged her on the shoulder and she shook herself, looking around at the four pair of eyes watching her intently.

"Well . . . what's it gonna be, kid?" Calhoun demanded - firmly, but not unkindly. "Your game, your call. If you want to go in there and scope the place out, then that's what we'll do."

Mike paused, the word _we'll _striking an unexpectedly tender cord somewhere deep inside her. Her throat catching strangely, she turned her gaze once more between the four faces on either side of her, her heart swelling with different, but equally humbling kinds of warmth for each of them . . .

. . . . and all at once, she realized . . . _truly realized, for the first time . . . _that Ralph was not the only person in her short, but turbulent life whom she'd grown to love.

Mike set her jaw, took two steps forward toward the Masterwork gate, then turned around to face the others.

"I'm going to go in alone," she said plainly.

A few seconds passed in silence . . . and then, at the height of her utmost seriousness, as she was looking each of them in the eye with as hard and unyielding an expression as she had ever mustered, and waiting expectantly for them to counter with some stern argument which she would immediately disarm . . . . something different happened. Something that Mike did not expect, and for which she was _not_ prepared.

Ralph, Vanellope, Calhoun, and Felix . . . . almost in perfect unison with each other . . . . each closed their eyes and laughed out loud.

Mike's resolute stare dropped like a curtain, and her cheeks flushed immediately.

"What!?" she demanded. "Why is that _funny?"_

The four of them continued to chuckle and snigger for another moment . . . then, still shaking their heads with amusement, they began marching forward toward the gate. Mike stammered helplessly, then _eeped_ as Ralph scooped her up in one arm and slung her over his shoulder as he passed by.

Too stunned and flustered to speak for a moment, Mike just let her arms and legs flop limply as they passed through the Masterwork plug gate, the light of the station shrinking further and further away from her.

"Hey . . . _hey, _now . . . wait, _wait just a minute, _here!" she snapped, struggling uselessly to worm herself out from under Ralph's hand. "I _mean _it, you guys . . . I'm going in by myself! I'm not letting the rest of you put yourselves in danger _again _because of - Ralph, would you _PUT ME DOWN, already? _I'm serious! Vanellope? . . . _Felix? _Why aren't you guys _listening _to me!?"

The four of them kept walking almost cheerfully forward as if they hadn't heard her. Calhoun chuckled again to herself as she checked the magazine on her pistol, then slid it back into its holster on her belt.

"Save your breath, girlie. You might need it when we get there."

"I _told _you guys, I don't want you to _COME!"_

"Yeah, well . . . tough _Tootsie _rolls, Chickadee," Vanellope remarked, stuffing her hands nonchalantly into the pocket of her sweatshirt as the group passed together through the opening of the tunnel. "After everything we just went through to save you . . . you think we're gonna risk throwing it all away again, just like _that?_ Face it. Whether you like it or not, you're _stuck _with us now."

"Er . . . I think what Miss Von Schweetz is _trying _to say . . . " Felix added sweetly, tilting a familiar half smile up at her, " . . . is that we have a responsibility to look out for you . . . because you're _more _than just a friend to us."

"That's right," Ralph said, gruffly and warmly just beside her. She could almost hear the smile on his face as he murmured, "Get used to it, Mike . . . you're part of the family now."

The four of them kept on walking down the tunnel in comfortable silence . . . and Mike, with her face still pointed the wrong way over Ralph's shoulder and her limbs dangling uselessly in the air, found herself unable - no matter how many times she tried - to speak for the rest of the journey.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_"I did everything I could think of to stop you from meeting her. I killed the lights in the entry tunnel . . . "_

As they were walking, Ralph glanced absently down at the cool, pale lights now spaced intermittently along the edges of the floor in the Masterwork tunnel. Even though there was nothing much of note to be illuminated in the bare passageway, it was still a bizarre and foreign sensation to be able to walk down the tunnel of Mike's game and actually see his own feet.

_" . . . I made the weather ominous and stormy . . . "_

They hadn't yet made it quite far enough down the tunnel that any light from the game was visible, but Ralph sensed from the familiar bank of the next curve up ahead that they were drawing very close. He was careful to show no outward sign of it, but his heart was beginning to pound more and more anxiously with each step forward.

_" . . . I wrote a glitch into the building so that whenever Mike was inside of it, it would be invisible from a distance . . . "_

They were very close to the end of the tunnel, now. A few feet further around the next bend, and they would be face to face with the opening into Masterwork . . . into whatever sort of Masterwork it was that now awaited them. Almost unconsciously, the five of them slowed down together until they had all come to a complete stop just short of the corner, and Ralph found himself staring nervously at the back of Mike's head in front of him ( once he became convinced she would no longer try to stop them from accompanying her into the game, he had put her down to walk the rest of the way on her own ).

He heard Calhoun drawing in a slow, steady breath beside him, followed by the precautionary _snick _of her pistol cocking.

"Everyone ready?"

Nothing but baited silence answered her. Ralph put his hand on Mike's shoulder, and she touched it with her own without looking back at him.

"Alright, then . . . time to put down this lame horse, once and for all."

Without another word, Calhoun strode fearlessly forward around the corner . . . and the next moment, the rest of them followed after her.

For a few seconds after they'd rounded the bank in the tunnel, Ralph thought they must have miscalculated somehow, that they had still been further back from the opening than they thought . . . because at first, there didn't seem to be anything ahead of them but more darkness. Then, all of a sudden, he realized that it was no longer flat electrical plastic beneath his feet, but dirt and grass . . . and then Ralph looked up and saw what was around them, a great rushing breath of both relief and amazement issued out between his parted lips.

Calhoun slowly lowered her gun. Felix pushed up the brim of his cap, and Vanellope took a few steps further ahead of the group for a better view.

Michelangela held one hand flat over her heart and hung her head, her shoulders collapsing in an almost exhausted release.

"Oh, thank _goodness," _she gasped under her breath.

"My land_," _Felix said softly as he turned his gaze up and down in every direction. "Mike, it's . . . it's _beautiful."_

At first glance, the world at the end of the tunnel into which they emerged had seemed absolutely, featurelessly dark . . . but a moment later, as his eyes adjusted, he saw that Masterwork was dark only because it was now the dead of night . . . and although the sky above them was of a purer, more absolute black than any black he had seen in memory, it was by no means featureless.

High above them, twinkling in the night sky like pinprick diamonds of white light, were stars . . . countless, thousands upon thousands of stars, more stars than Ralph had seen the night he and Mike had laid on the beach looking up into the heavens . . . more stars than he had ever seen in any sky in his life. Hanging low over the calm horizon of the ocean, reflected in its midnight blue waters and sending beams of white radiance over the entire landscape, was an enormous full moon. Warm, salty breezes were wafting in off of the sea, and rolling breakers were crashing gently on the gleaming white sands of the beach. The forest that loomed up on their right side was a seemingly endless mosaic of shadowy boughs, and beyond them the snow-capped mountains gleamed so brightly beneath the moon that they almost seemed to be touched by daylight.

Mike's home . . . the quaint, three-story building of yellow brick . . . stood comfortably and quietly on the shoreline, looking as warm and inviting as it ever had.

Everything in the game looked just the same as it had before the kill code was released . . . and yet, none of it was the same at all. Something in the very air of the world was different . . . warmer, richer, brighter and darker at the same instant. Ralph knew, after a single glance, that no appendage of the virus had survived there . . . what he saw before him was evidence enough in itself. This was Masterwork as it had always been intended to be . . . this was the Masterwork unmarred by manipulation and fear.

For one long, peaceful, imperturbable moment, none of them spoke . . . they just stood together, and drank in the beauty of their surroundings in soundless relief.

The silent spell of the landscape went unbroken until suddenly, without warning, Ralph heard Vanellope let out a loud, involuntary yawn . . . and with that sound, he abruptly realized all at once how utterly, unspeakably exhausted he felt himself. He had no way of knowing exactly how many hours had elapsed since he'd been awoken by Vanellope's alarm at nine o'clock that morning ( that very same _morning! _and yet it seemed as if more than a lifetime had passed since that moment! ), but he felt suddenly that it must be terribly late indeed.

No sooner had Vanellope yawned than Felix . . . then Calhoun, then Ralph himself, shortly followed suit, until they had become a veritable chorus of exhausted groaning, and it was apparent that along with the evaporation of any further possible threat to be faced that night, each of them had also abruptly lost whatever remaining stores of energy they'd managed to cobble together in preparation for such.

After that, there was another moment of marked, somewhat pregnant silence in which everyone simply looked at each other. It soon became obvious that they were all thinking the same thing - that even as exhausted as they were, they still felt that they wanted to stay close to one another, that they had been through too much together that day to simply part their separate ways for the night - but weren't sure how to quite broach the subject . . . until finally, Mike broke the tension with a soft chuckle and ran one hand wearily through her hair.

"Well . . . it has to be getting pretty late by now, huh? And, since it doesn't look as if we're going to run into any trouble here . . ." she trailed off without inflection, turning and taking a few steps down the dirt path in the direction of her house, then gesturing over her shoulder for the others to follow. "I don't know if I can promise you guys much in the way of _beds, _but . . . if you don't mind the floor, I have a thick rug and a bureau full of tablecloths."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_Bbbrreepp. Bbbrreepp. Bbbrreepp._

Ralph opened his eyes.

According to the soft chirp of the cuckoo clock on Mike's kitchen wall, it was three o'clock in the morning.

It had now been just over an hour since the five of them had settled themselves down on the ragtag collection of towels and tablecloths strewn about the floor in the middle of Mike's first-story room - with the dining table and china cabinet pushed aside to make space for them all - and it had been scarcely ten minutes after that that the others had each drifted swiftly, one by one, into a deep, effortless sleep . . .

. . . whereas Ralph had laid down on his back, closed his eyes, and then proceeded to lie there awake for the next fifty minutes. In spite of all his best efforts and unfeigned, bone-weary exhaustion, sleep eluded him time and time again, like whispers of smoke slipping through his hands - until finally, the clock sounded at three a.m., and he gave up his pursuit altogether.

He opened his eyes and stared blankly up at the dark ceiling.

All around him, Ralph could hear the shallow, even breathing of his friends and feel the warm proximity of their bodies beside his. Vanellope had crawled up on top of him and fallen asleep face down on his chest . . . Mike had laid herself perpendicular to him using his stomach as a pillow, with her hair fanned out over his overalls and his right arm draped over her . . . Calhoun and Felix were lying together somewhere at his left side, Felix's feet propped up on his other arm and Calhoun - whether out of lingering paranoia, or sheer, exhausted indifference - still clutching her pistol in her left hand as she slept, and yet still looking markedly less intimidating than usual in her sweats and tank-top.

It might easily have been the single coziest, most peaceful and easy moment in his recent memory . . . and yet somehow, Ralph found himself completely unable to relax. Thoughts were buzzing ceaselessly in his mind, whispered words and flashes of imagery he just couldn't seem to turn off, no matter how he tried.

Several more minutes passed. Vanellope yawned and stretched in her sleep, smacking her mouth a few times before resettling herself over his heart . . . and before he even knew what he was doing - as if his body was unable to bear the restlessness any longer and had sprung into motion under its own power - Ralph was using this opportunity to quickly lift her off of him and put her back down on the blankets without waking her. Sitting up ever so slowly, he cautiously maneuvered himself out of Mike's grasp, cupping her head in his hand and then lowering it to the floor.

Once successfully unencumbered, Ralph stood up and tiptoed away from the group as silently as he could manage, very nearly tripping over the pile of Calhoun's armor and wincing when one of the floorboards creaked under his weight. Holding his breath, he carefully opened the Dutch doors with two fingers on the knob . . . sucked in his gut, squeezed through the doorway with as little commotion as possible . . . and then, once he was safely outside, pulled it not _quite _shut behind him, sat down on the front stoop . . . and breathed a long, tired, frustrated sigh up at the starlight.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_CckkkreeeeEEAAAaaak._

With a soft shudder wracking his body - as if he'd just stumbled over something in a dream - Felix's eyes suddenly fluttered open, and all at once he found himself awake.

Disoriented from heavy sleep, it took him a moment to remember where he was. His head was resting on Tamora's stomach, rising and falling gently in rhythm with her breath, and the floorboards - though separated from him by several layers of makeshift bedding - were pressing somewhat unpleasantly on the small of his back. Felix blinked groggily up at the ceiling for a few seconds . . . then, alerted partially into coherence by another series of small shuffling and creaking noises nearby, he sat up in time to see Ralph's unmistakable bulk stepping outside and pulling the front door shut behind him.

His mind growing clearer as the diffusing shades of sleep fell from it one by one, Felix frowned curiously in the direction his antagonist had gone, then glanced back down at the others around him. All three of the girls were still sleeping peacefully, each of them dead to the world . . . Vanellope and Michalengela didn't appear to have so much as twitched at the disappearance of their human mattress.

Felix deliberated briefly between going out to check on Ralph, and letting himself fall back into the lull of unconsciousness that was calling to him so persuasively . . . but it didn't take long before - as was so often the case for him - the concern for another's well-being won out over the concern for his own. Moving carefully so as not to disturb his wife or the others, Felix stood up and crept barefoot across the moonbeam-littered floor of Mike's kitchen and pulled the door open just wide enough to peek his head through.

". . . Ralph? You okay, brother?" he whispered at the hunched shoulders of his antagonist looming before him on the front stoop.

Ralph let out a startled cry and jumped two inches in the air, bumping one hand into the copper mailbox beside the door with a jarringly loud _clang _and then hissing curses to himself.

Felix cringed at the noise and immediately darted out onto the stoop, sealing the door shut behind his back with an anxious exhale.

"Quiet, _please!" _he pleaded under his breath, inching his way around Ralph to sit beside him on the edge of the stoop. There was scarcely enough space there for the two of them. "Believe me, you do _not_ want to see what Tammy is like when she's woken up from a sound sleep . . . "

"Yeah, well . . . you _scared _me," Ralph grumbled unappreciatively, his breath slowing to normal again as he tried to give Felix a bit more room on the step.

"Sorry, but . . . if you'll forgive my asking . . . what is it you're doing out here, anyway?"

Ralph made a face and hesitated uncertainly, looking away into the distance.

"I . . . . couldn't sleep."

"Couldn't sleep . . . . _because?"_

"Because, I . . . because . . . _because . . . . _aaagghhh," Ralph trailed off in a frustrated groan, rubbing one hand over his face and then turning to look at Felix with a troubled furrow in his brow. "Listen, Felix . . . if I . . . if I were to _tell _you something, something I swore I would keep secret . . . if I were to tell you, would you _promise _not to tell anyone else? Not even your wife?"

Felix started, his eyes widening and an uneasy frown turning down his face.

"Well . . . of course, I would, but . . . Ralph, are you sure that's the kind of thing you should really be _telling _me? I mean . . . if you swore and all - "

"Please_, _Felix," Ralph interrupted, a startlingly anxious look in his pleading eyes. "_Please_, I have to tell _someone. _I know I shouldn't, but . . . I'm afraid that if I don't, it's going to drive me completely nuts. _Please."_

Felix's face softened toward the silhouette of his antagonist's head and shoulders, standing out starkly against the backdrop of endless stars.

" . . . okay, Ralph. Whatever it is, I promise it's safe with me."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

" . . . . so . . . with his last words, Art asked me never to tell Michelangela about him, and then he . . . then . . . he was just _gone."_

After what felt like a long, _long_ space of time sitting hunched over uncomfortably on the stone step and going on and on in a hushed, emotionally draining monologue, Ralph at last finished the story . . . and for another prolonged moment afterward, Felix remained absolutely silent.

Before going to sleep, his protagonist had gotten partially undressed and was now wearing nothing but his blue jeans and white undershirt, which almost seemed to glow unnaturally in the starlit night . . . but the shadow of the house behind them was still too dark for him to make out Felix's expression as he finally murmured, in a voice so somber that it almost seemed to echo in Ralph's ears after he'd finished speaking . . .

"That poor man. That poor . . . _poor_ young man."

Ralph hung his head and nodded in solemn agreement, Artemisio's sadly smiling face appearing freshly in his mind's eye and filling him with a kind of regret that he didn't know what to do with. It was only in hearing the story again out loud that he was suddenly struck with how horribly, incredibly unfair the whole thing seemed . . . _for Art to have never even been given a real chance at life . . . to have seen the error of his ways and repented, only to then be erased from existence forever along with the virus . . . _

"I just . . . I just wish there was something I could have _done _for him," Ralph muttered helplessly, resting his head in his hand and blinking unseeingly down at the ground. "All he ever wanted was for someone to know him . . . all he ever wanted was to not be a_lone."_

There was another long, grave silence between them.

Then . . . in a voice almost entirely different from the one he'd used a moment earlier, Felix spoke up again.

"You know, Ralph . . . " he said in a slow murmur, as if he were trying not to be distracted by the thoughts racing wildly in his head; " . . . you and the others can poke fun at me all you like, but . . . the fact is, no matter _how _you look at it, there just isn't any way in the world that Fix-It Felix Jr. could have restarted itself after the emergency shutdown."

Ralph lifted his gaze, looking sideways at his protagonist. The spark of an idea . . . or a hope, rather, one last desperate but severe hope . . . had already lit suddenly deep inside of him at the tone in Felix's voice.

" . . . what are you saying?"

"I'm saying that something . . . or _someone . . . _had to have initiated it," Felix answered, turning to look Ralph firmly in the eye. "And if you're sure that that someone wasn't _you . . . "_

He trailed off, and Ralph's heart began to pound harder in his chest. Felix looked at him meaningfully for another moment . . . then narrowed his brow into a firm, serious line.

"Ralph . . . I have a question for you."

"What?"

"Do you think you could take me to the Masterwork code room?"

Ralph blinked. His mind raced for a split second . . . and with a sudden jolt of absurdity, he realized that he had never actually once stopped to wonder where on earth the Masterwork code room was.

"I . . . I don't know where it is," he answered truthfully, astounded and somewhat disgusted at his own thick-headedness. "I've never even _thought _about it."

Felix frowned contemplatively. "Well . . . try to think about it _now. _Are there any places you can think of that it might be? It would have to be somewhere close to the center of the game . . . somewhere self-contained - a room, or a chamber of some kind . . . something that's closely or inseparably integrated into another feature of the game. _Think, _Ralph."

Ralph furrowed his brow and struggled to scour the interior of his mind, running over every detail of the Masterwork landscape in his thoughts but coming across nothing that stood out as a possible candidate . . . _the beach, the forest, the kitchen, the studio, the third floor . . . _he had seen them all, and as far as he could surmise none of them had contained anything even remotely like the cellar in the Niceland building basement or the inner chamber of the Sugar Rush castle.

Ralph blew a puff of frustrated air through his lips and sat up straighter on the stoop to absently stretch his aching back . . . only to accidentally bang the back of his head on the mailbox beside the door.

_"OUCH! Son _of a . . . !" he growled, wincing and rubbing the back of his head. He craned his neck around to glare at the copper box gleaming dimly in the starlight, transferring the brunt of his unrelated aggravation onto the inanimate object; "I _swear, _Felix, if I hit that stupid thing _one more time _I'm going to crush it into a . . . "

But then . . . at that very moment, while he was still glaring at it . . . something about the inconspicuous copper mailbox - now with both the names Michelangela _and _Artemisio stamped into its side - made him pause, his words trailing off in mid sentence.

_Somewhere contained . . . a small chamber of some kind . . . something closely integrated into another feature of the game . . . ._

"No . . . " he whispered to himself, narrowing his eyes at the ludicrous idea . . . but at the same time, his hand was inching slowly closer and closer to the front door of the mailbox, which he abruptly realized he had never actually seen opened. "_No, _it couldn't . . . . _could it?"_

"What? _What?" _Felix pressed eagerly.

Without looking at him, without flickering his skeptical expression of incredulity . . . Ralph took hold of the little copper handle between his thumb and forefinger and gently pulled down on the mailbox door. It slid open with a gentle _skkkreeak, _and Felix jumped up to his feet to peer inside of it with his face pressed closely beside Ralph's.

They both stared in silence for a split-second . . . then Ralph leaned back, shaking his head with amazement.

"Well, whaddaya _know," _he muttered under his breath.

On the other side of the little door, where the dark, empty interior of the mailbox _ought _to have been, there was instead a secondary door immediately behind the first . . . and in the center of the secondary door, there was a round little console with a familiar panel of controls set into it.

_"Ha!" _Felix exclaimed in an elated whisper, maneuvering himself in front of the mailbox and standing slightly on his toes to put his face level with the opening. "Whaddaya know, in_deed . . . _way to go, brother! You found the code room! . . . or rather . . . code _box, _I should say."

"Yeah, but . . . what are you going to _do _in there, now that we've found it?"

"I can't say yet for sure . . . but there's something I have to find out," Felix answered, quickly and quietly punching the universal cheat code into the ridiculously small control panel. It clicked responsively, rotated ninety degrees, and then slid into the floor of the mailbox and miraculously disappeared.

At first, Ralph couldn't see anything within the pitch dark interior of the tiny code room . . . but as he leaned in closer behind Felix's back and peered over the top of his protagonist's head, his jaw slowly descended and his eyes went round with wonder.

"Sweet Mother _Hubbard, _would you look at _that . . . "_

There, inside the mailbox, hovering in the middle of the opaque blackness like a miniature model of a solar system or a nebula hovering in space, was the Masterwork code network . . . a tiny, elaborate, tight-knit web of glowing boxes each barely half an inch wide, connected to one another by glistening, gossamer threads so thin and delicate they were scarcely visible to the naked eye. Felix let out a long, low whistle as he gazed into the contents of the mailbox.

"I _tell_ you, Ralph . . . what they can't do with code these days! It's a crying shame this game was never fully finished . . . it really would have been a kind of masterpiece."

Ralph could only nod acquiescingly, another faint wave of fresh sadness and sympathy for Artemisio washing over him as he squinted into the intricacies of the Masterwork code . . . but perplexion and curiosity quickly brought him back to the moment at hand.

"So . . . did you find out what you wanted?"

"Hmmmm . . . _no, _not quite yet . . . I think I'm going to need a lighter instrument for this."

Felix disappeared silently back into the house, and the next moment he reappeared holding his handyman's tool belt. He searched a few of the pockets until he found a pair of long, thin, needle-nose pliers . . . then, grasping the tool firmly in one hand, he addressed the opening of the mailbox again and began working delicately inside of it, his head and hands blocking Ralph's view completely.

Several anxious, impatient minutes later, Felix let out a gasping sound of triumph so suddenly it made Ralph jump.

"What? What did you _find?" _he demanded eagerly, crouching over his protagonist as closely as he could without knocking him over.

_"There! _Just what I thought!" Felix cried in a jubilant whisper, leaning back so that Ralph could see and pointing into the code network with the tip of his pliers. "Look at _those!"_

Ralph squinted as sharply as he could at the place Felix was indicating, and after a brief moment he spotted it . . . what looked almost like a faint, infinitesimal whisper of glowing blue smoke hovering in the midst of the white code boxes, unattached to anything around it. A second later, he caught sight of another . . . then another, and another and another, until he realized that the whole of the diminutive Masterwork code network was permeated with perhaps dozens of the little blue wisps, floating aimlessly in and out of the other programs like fish floating through a bed of weeds.

"Yeah . . . _so? _What are they?"

Felix drew in a steadying breath, then let it out slowly.

"Ralph . . . I think _those _might be Artemisio."

Ralph stopped. His eyes grew wider, his mouth was suddenly dry, and his heart began to pound against the wall of his chest again. When he didn't say anything in reply, Felix returned to the opening of the mailbox and began working with the pliers again, talking softly but excitedly as he went.

"If you stop and think about, it's the only explanation that makes any real sense_ . . . someone _must have been responsible for restarting our game, and we know that it definitely wasn't you, right? Well . . . if Artemisio said he could manipulate Masterwork's code when he was inside of _Mike's _mind, why shouldn't he have been able to manipulate Fix-It Felix Jr. when he was inside of _yours?"_

"But . . . he was erased along with the virus!" Ralph stammered, finding his voice again after a moment of struggle. "I _saw _him disappear in front of me . . . how could he have possibly initiated a restart after he was deleted?"

"That leads me to my _second _thought. Putting together everything you've told me, Ralph . . . and if what I'm seeing in this code network is what I _think _it is . . . I don't think Artemisio _was _deleted. And I'm not sure he was ever really inside of your mind, at all . . . at least, not _all of _him. You said that Art told you the virus made him able to reach a part of his consciousness outside of the game and into the Internet, like a tentacle . . . I think that maybe, that's the same way he reached into your and Michelangela's _minds . . . _only he didn't realize it himself. I don't think the core of Artemisio's programming ever left Masterwork at all . . . the virus used you and Mike as physical host programs, but only a small part of Art's consciousness went with it. His code always stayed anchored to Masterwork . . . so when the emergency shutdown deleted the virus, he lost his link to your mind, but he was never erased _completely . . . _and he must have been able to initiate the restart in the split-second before the connection was severed."

Ralph just stared at the back of Felix's head with his mouth open and his brow furrowed in confusion, his head throbbing with the effort of collating everything his protagonist was saying.

"But . . . but how could he have _possibly_ stayed anchored to Masterwork after the game was deleted by the kill code?"

"Here's the thing, Ralph . . . the more I think about it, the more I think we misunderstood what the Love Bug was really doing. That email that we read told us that the Love Bug used the kill code to _destroy_ programs after it had copied them . . . but I don't think that was true after all. I don't think the Love Bug had the power to actually destroy or delete anything . . . I think it was only able to _corrupt. _The kill code didn't obliterate Masterwork's programming, it only scrambled it . . . mixed it up and distorted it, so that none of the pieces could form coherent lines of code anymore, and it became one big nothingness. That's why both Masterwork and Sugar Rush were restored once the virus was deleted. All of the information was still there - it only had to be _put back together_."

Ralph gaped in awe for another few seconds until the sound of the pliers tapping once gently on the wall of the mailbox drew him out of his abstract bewilderment and back to reality.

"Felix . . . what are you _doing _in there?"

"Give me just a second . . . just one . . . more_ . . . alright_ . . . take a look."

He stood back again so Ralph could see. Now, instead of drifting around separately throughout the tiny network, the wisps of blue light that were the disconnected fragments of Artemisio's program had been corralled together into a cluster, merging to form a single, tiny ball of amorphous blue light . . . all except for one, which was still held tightly in the clasp of the pliers, Felix's steady hand grasping it in place within the interior of the mailbox.

"No one can write new code for a game from the inside, Ralph. All we can do is rearrange it," Felix explained solemnly. "I can't fill the holes in Artemisio's program . . . I can't give him a real body. _But . . . _if I put this last fragment of his code together with the others, into one entity . . . and if, with a little luck, they can manage to stay together . . . " Felix trailed off, as if the possibility were so frail that he might wound it even by uttering it aloud. "I can't say for sure what this will do. It might not do anything at all . . . but you're the one who spoke to him, so you're the only one who can speak for him now. I'll let you decide."

It took Ralph less than three heartbeats to make up his mind. He heard himself saying it automatically out loud before the thought had even fully formed itself in his head.

_"Do it."_

Felix nodded. With one final, delicate movement in the code network, he added the last stray wisp of blue to the ball . . . and it melted in with the others. He let out a long, nervous exhale, then stepped back to stand beside Ralph on the grass, both of them watching the inside of the mailbox anxiously for . . . for what, Ralph wasn't sure.

"So . . . how do we know if it _worked?"_ he asked presently, looking first at Felix, then glancing around them at the moonlit landscape, as if half expecting something resembling Artemisio to magically appear beside them.

Felix only shrugged and scratched the back of his neck uneasily . . . they waited another full minute, waited for any sign of activity or difference in either the code network or the physical world around them . . . they waited, and _waited . . . _but nothing happened. The waves continued to break on the shore with gentle, rhythmic crashes nearby . . . but apart from that, the game was completely still and silent.

Felix let out a defeated sigh. "Well . . . I knew it was a long shot," he muttered dejectedly, taking a half-step nearer to the mail-box. "Sorry to get your hopes up, Ralph . . . I suppose I should have - wait . . . _wait . . . RALPH! _Look, _look! Something's happening!"_

His heart leaping into mouth, Ralph peered excitedly over Felix's shoulder into the code network and thought he saw a darting blip of movement from the little blue orb, so fast and brief it was almost imperceptible . . . but he barely had time to think about it before another, much more significant phenomenon immediately drew his attention elsewhere.

Off in the distance, out of the corner of his eye, Ralph saw something . . . a flash of muted color, a blaze of glowing light in the darkness that seemed to grow first brighter and then fainter in surges, like the pulse of a lightning-bug. He whipped his gaze away from the mailbox and stared in the direction from which he'd thought it had come, holding his breath without realizing it. For a few seconds, everything in sight was calm and dark again . . . then, just as Ralph was beginning to fear that he might have imagined it . . . it came again.

It was a dim, but radiant phantasm of blue lights, hovering in the air like smoke and throbbing almost with the semblance of a heartbeat . . . and it was hanging, quite calmly and silently, just inside the black mouth of the tunnel on the right.

"Ralph, _look, _you have to see this!" Felix was hissing excitedly, his face all but squeezed into the opening of the mailbox. "Artemisio's program has _attached _itself to something . . . I can't quite make out the label on the side of the code box, but I think . . . I _think _it says - "

_"The Internet?"_ Ralph said in a soft, hollow voice . . . and he was astounded to find the curve of an involuntary smile already turning on his face, as if his heart somehow knew something that his brain had not yet caught up with.

"Why . . . _yes, _I think it does . . . but how did you - "

Ralph gently grabbed Felix's head in his hand and turned it to face the pair of stone archways embedded in the forest wall on the other side of the lawn . . . and a small part of him was relieved when a sharp gasp from his protagonist confirmed that _he_ could see the apparition, too.

Without another word, Ralph and Felix took off at a half-jog across the grass, slowing to a heavily breathing halt just outside the opening of the tunnel on the right and staring into its depths with expressions of pure amazement.

The wisps of pulsing blue illumination - _a warm, deep, indigo entirely unlike the garish electric blue of the virus_ - were drifting around each other in a shapeless cloud, almost like a gathering of butterflies . . . but every few seconds or so, for just one brief instant, they grouped together to form a coherent outline, just a glowing impression of a face and shoulders and hands and hair that was gone again as soon as it had surfaced . . . . but it was enough for Ralph to recognize immediately.

Artemisio's face - the shadowy, perpetually dissolving and then reforming ghost of Artemisio's face - looked at him in a way that, with the right imagination, might almost have resembled a smile . . . and before Felix could say anything, Ralph had stepped forward through the mouth of the tunnel and was plunged into its darkness.

The instant he had crossed the threshold of the opening, he felt a distinct change in the air around him, as if it had been mildly electrified somehow . . . and all at once, without a single noise reaching his ears or a single sign of visible life around him . . . he realized that there were _words, _drifting across the plane of his mind as clearly as if they were his own thoughts.

_It's good to see you again, Ralph._

He froze, his shoulders tensing unconsciously and his breath catching in his throat. He turned a full circle and looked back through the opening of the tunnel, where Felix was still standing in the moonlight and watching him with a wide-eyed mixture of confusion and excitement . . . but it was obvious that he hadn't heard the voice.

Except . . . it _wasn't _really a voice. Ralph hadn't truly _heard_ it, either . . . nor had he seen it written out in his head like words on a page. He found that he couldn't make sense of it to himself in practical terms . . . he had simply _received it_, almost like telepathy . . . and he somehow knew, without the slightest hesitation or doubt, that it was Artemisio who was speaking to him.

"Where _are _you?" Ralph whispered blankly out loud, looking around the interior of the tunnel opening again and seeing nothing but darkness.

_I'm **here**. Well - as here as one can be without a body, I guess. I'm part of Masterwork's Internet-compatible program now, thanks to Felix . . . and thanks to you._

Because the words weren't coming to him through an audible voice, there was no way to interpret any emotion, positive or negative, from what Artemisio was saying - and Ralph found himself suddenly conflicted.

"Is that . . . a _good _thing?" he murmured uneasily.

In his head, the disembodied words seemed to come as close as they could to imitating laughter.

_Ralph . . . you really are such a gentle person. So much more gentle than you allow people to see. It's **better** than a good thing . . . it might be the best possible thing I could ever hope for, being the way that I am. Don't you see? I thought that unless I had a physical body, I would never be able to do anything or go anywhere . . . but I was wrong. Now that my code fragments have been assembled **here,**_ _I can go into the Internet! I can explore **everything**, go anywhere in the largest universe of information there is! _

_I don't have to be __**trapped **__here, anymore, Ralph!_

_Maybe . . . maybe, I can even find other programs like me out there . . ._

Ralph was surprised by his own reaction to this incredible news . . . in spite of the immense relief and broadening swell of elation he felt, he was also struck with an inexplicable pang of melancholy at the idea of Artemisio spending an eternity wandering the Internet by himself.

"But Art, are you . . . I mean . . . are sure that's what you _want?"_

_Yes. It's what I want, Ralph. It's more than I ever thought I could have._

Ralph swallowed and frowned thoughtfully.

"I mean . . . I guess, what I really _mean, _is . . . Art . . . Michelangela is sleeping in the house, right now. Before you go, I could . . . I could _bring her here, _if you wanted."

There was a short, empty silence.

_No._

"But . . . are you _sure? _This is your chance to meet her in person! Isn't that what you always wanted?"

Another pause.

_No, Ralph. It is what I wanted . . . but it's not what I want anymore. With everything I've done . . . with everything that I am, now . . . I don't want Mike to know me. Not like this. I don't want her to have to feel any more pain or sorrow for me than she already has. But maybe . . . . someday. I'll always have my code anchored here . . . maybe someday, after I've found out more about our game, about myself . . . about why they left me unfinished . . . maybe then, I'll be ready to come back. _

_Maybe then, we'll **both** be ready . . . but until then, Ralph . . . please. Please don't tell her about me._

_When and if the time ever comes . . . I want to be able to tell her the truth myself._

Ralph was silent for a moment.

". . . it _was _you who restarted Fix-It Felix Jr., wasn't it?"

_After everything I've put you through . . . I figured it was the least I could do. _

A mixture of both warmth and sadness welled up around the bottom of Ralph's throat.

"So . . . I guess . . . this is goodbye for _real _then, huh?"

_I'm just sorry I can't shake your hand again. _

Ralph laughed out loud - somewhat sadly - the sound echoing off the tunnel walls. "Well . . . who knows? Maybe someday you _will again."_

_. . . I don't know how to thank you, Ralph . . . you, and Felix, and all of your friends. I'm not ever going to forget you . . ._

_. . . or her._

_Goodbye, buddy._

Then . . . all around on every side of him, the dark blue lights reappeared and flared up together in the darkness ahead of him . . . they merged together to form a single, shapeless entity . . . and with a final flash of brilliance, disappeared down into the invisible distance of the tunnel on the right.

Ralph stared unseeingly for another moment into the blackness ahead of him . . . then hooked one corner of his mouth in a gentle smile and shook his head.

"No, Art . . . not goodbye. Just . . . _until I see you again."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

_Bbbrreepp. Bbbrreepp. Bbbrreepp. Brreepp._

By the time Ralph and Felix had finished discussing what they'd both experienced - and Felix had been sworn to absolute secrecy several times over - and they had finally crept as noiselessly as possible back into the kitchen and shut the door behind them, the cuckoo on the wall was already chirping four o'clock in the morning.

The two of them tiptoed back over to the nest of towels and tablecloths spread out on the floor, and with a wide, prodigious yawn, Felix settled back down beside his wife, who had not budged an inch in the past hour. Ralph couldn't help smiling once at the familiar, gruffly scowling expression Calhoun apparently wore even in her sleep . . . then, as he turned to resume his own place at the other side of the "bed" and looked down, he saw something that made him stop and stare, frozen in his crouched position, with an enormous, delighted grin of adoration . . . one that he would never in his life have displayed to anyone in waking daylight . . . spreading on his face.

In his absence, Mike and Vanellope had closed the gap left by him and moved closer to each other in their sleep. They were both still blissfully passed out, their faces blank and peaceful and their breathing rhythmic . . . but Vanellope had snuggled up on her back flush beside Mike, and Mike had rolled to one side and wrapped both arms around Vanellope, pulling her close to her chest.

For almost a full minute, Ralph stood silently in the dark and smiled down at them.

Then . . . making as little noise as he could . . . he took one of the larger linens nearby and draped it gently over both of his girls, tucking it carefully around their shoulders and legs. He then sat down on a patch of bare floor a short space away, lie down on his back with his hands propped behind his head . . . and his heavy eyelids had scarcely had a chance to close before he was already fast asleep.


	50. Epilogue

**A/N: **Just so you guys know, there are sadly no illustrations for this chapter yet . . . there _are _some coming, but they probably won't be posted on my dA for about another week yet, so keep a weather eye out. Also, because nobody guessed it . . . the secret WIR-related anagram hidden in this and couple other chapters was _Homer Ciro, _which is an anagram for Rich Moore, the director of the film.

And with that . . . with _this . . . _we have officially brought this story to its close. The whale has been released . . . the Frankenbaby has grown up and gone off to college . . . the Ridiculous Thing has come to its Inevitable Conclusion.

I want to thank each and every one of you, my wonderful readers, from the bottom of my heart, for sticking with me throughout this rollercoaster of craziness . . . and I want to take this moment to dedicate this Epilogue and this story as a whole to someone very special, my own personal Love Bug - my fiancee. I know you've been reading this, sweetie, and I have a pretty good hunch that you've been leaving me reviews in secret . . . so here you go. The ultimate reviewer shout-out . . . I love you, honey-pot.

Thanks, everybody . . . it's been fun, but now I've got to go. _Until I see you again!_

_**Love Bug**_

_Epilogue_

"I'm telling you, Carl . . . over thirty _years _in this business, and I've never seen anything like it. I mean . . . . I could understand two, or three, or maybe even _four_ games getting buggy on the same day . . . you know, if there had been a storm, or a power surge or something . . . but seventeen? _Seventeen?"_

Carl just shrugged helplessly and took a swig from his water bottle as he waited for Litwak to unlock the front doors of the arcade.

"I don't know what to tell you, Stan . . . I hate to say it, but it sort of just sounds to me like a lot of your old clunkers are about ready for retirement. Consoles don't last forever, pal."

Litwak let out a frustrated sigh as the door-lock finally _clicked _open around his key, and he and Carl shuffled inside. It was a bright, sunny Wednesday afternoon in June . . . _exactly the kind of afternoon that under normal circumstances should have seen red-letter business for the arcade_ . . . but even the beams of summer sunshine filtering through the glass weren't enough to brighten the depressing atmosphere of the place that day. The arcade had barely been closed down for a full forty-eight hours, but it already seemed to have taken up the dusty, shuttered-in quality of an abandoned institution . . . and the orange _Out-of-Order _signs obscuring the screens of more than a dozen consoles all around the room certainly did nothing to help the impression.

His spirits feeling lower than they had in almost longer than he could remember, Litwak wearily switched on the lights and began heading toward his office.

"I've got some paperwork and things to catch up on, first . . . you mind getting started without me?"

"Sure thing, but . . . just remember that I _warned_ you, Stan - there may not be a whole lot I can _do."_

"Right, right . . . I understand," Litwak nodded dismally and turned his back on Carl as the maintenance man went to address the nearest out-of-order console. He pushed through the swinging door of his office, switched on the light, rubbed his eyes tiredly with one hand for a moment, then turned on the computer and flopped down into his chair as he waited for it to boot up. His back began to ache irritatingly, and he sighed again as he sat up straighter and leaned over the desk.

_Maybe all of this was some kind of a sign . . . maybe he was finally getting too old to run this business by himself._

_Maybe . . . it was time for him to start thinking of letting __**himself **__out to pasture, along with all of his 'old clunkers' . . . ._

By the time Litwak had sorted through the piles of junk mail and old notices that he had allowed to accumulate on the ends of his desk and went to check his email, he was in such a sour and disinterested mood that he almost glanced over the first new message in his inbox without noticing it . . . then, something in the tagline caught his eye and abruptly sparked his curiosity.

"_Revised Follow-Up to customer concerns with Update on PGC-Pr 'Masterwork' line . . . from Homer Ciro, Tobikomi Gaming Inc., Customer Service/Technical support . . . " _Litwak peered over his glasses as he muttered the subject line of the email out loud to himself. "'Follow-Up?' Huh . . . that's funny, don't remember getting the _first _message . . . 'bout time they got back to me already, the bums . . . "

Litwak trailed off into an irritated grumble and settled in more comfortably to read the message on his computer screen, mouthing the words silently out of habit as he went.

_Dear Mr. Stan Litwak . . . This is a standardized courtesy announcement from the Customer Service branch of Tobikomi Gaming Inc. to inform you and the rest of our valued customers that, due to numerous factors - including inoperable groundwork programming difficulties and an overall poor reception of the game on a regional scale - all further development and production of the PGC-Pr. 'Masterwork' line has officially been cancelled. Tobikomi has no plans to adapt or re-continue the project at this time._

_However - in light of the project cancellation, and based on the considerable amount of customer feedback objecting to the terms of our previous announcement, Tobikomi Gaming Inc. has also decided to amend our recent retraction and uphold all tenets of the original trial-release contract, if desired. Any malfunctioning 'Masterwork' console returned to its distributor within the previously stated time window will still qualify the renter for a full refund . . . however, all trial-purchasers of the game may also resume the original terms of their contract and complete the purchase of their console for a reduced fee at the end of the predetermined trial period. Please contact your distributor for the revised details of this transaction offer._

_Again, we at Tobikomi Gaming Inc. appreciate your participation and patience throughout this experimental venture, and hope that we may continue to enjoy your business in the future._

_Sincerely . . . Homer Ciro, Head of Technical Customer Services. _

Litwak paused at the end of the short email, crinkling his brow in confusion and blinking for a moment at the lines he'd just read.

_'Malfunctioning consoles?' 'Reduced fee?' _

_What in blazes were these people talking about? All he'd done was sent an email last week asking about a weird error message appearing on the screen . . . how in the __**world **__could they possibly know that the game had malfunctioned just two days ago?_

_And now . . . if he was reading this correctly . . . they were offering to sell him the Masterwork console for __**less **__than the original price?_

He scratched his head and leaned back in his office chair, staring at the computer screen with a strange look of confusion that quickly began to melt into a scowl of indifference.

_Well, that would be fantastic news and all . . . __**if **__it weren't for the fact that Masterwork, like more than half the other games in his arcade, was currently __**broken**__._

_He had been so hoping to be able to save up enough money to buy the quirky art-game prototype at the end of its trial-run, to make it a permanent addition to the arcade . . . and now that that goal was in reach, it was starting to look like there might not even __**be **__a Litwak's arcade for much longer._

Litwak felt, if possible, in an even rottener mood than before he'd read the email. He was so disgusted, in fact, that he didn't even feel up to going through the rest of his inbox at the moment . . . and he was just about to go storming out the back door of his office and try to cool off with a walk around the block when a sudden voice calling to him from the arcade floor stopped him.

"_Stan? _Stan . . . I think you'd better come and take a look at this."

Litwak paused, then growled in the back of his throat and pushed through the swinging door, trudging miserably toward Carl and preparing himself for the worst. The maintenance man was standing in the center of the room, his arms crossed and a loose stack of all the _Out-of-Order _signs he'd removed from the games lying on the floor near his feet. Before they even spoke, the look on his friend's face alone was enough to make Litwak seriously consider his plans for retiring again.

"Well? Give it to me straight, Carl . . . what's the diagnosis?"

Carl just stared silently at him for a moment.

"The diagnosis? The diag_nosis?_ Stan . . . . my diagnosis is that you have completely lost your mind."

Of all the things he had been expecting to hear, this statement was so far from any of them that Litwak actually jumped in surprise, his grim expression blanking instantly.

"What!? What on earth makes you say that?"

Carl shook his head wearily, then turned and made a broad, slow gesture with one hand to the row of consoles behind him.

"Stan . . . not a single one of these games is broken. Not a _single one."_

Litwak's jaw dropped. For several seconds, he just stood there blinking and stammering soundlessly in disbelief.

"But . . . but that . . . that's im_possible! _I was here when it happened . . . _all _of these games were malfunctioning . . . the kids - !"

"Well . . . I don't know what to tell you. I checked 'em all, Stan . . . and they all seem to be a-okay to _me."_

Scarcely able to believe what he was hearing, Litwak pushed past Carl to lean over and peer anxiously into the screen of the Sugar Rush console behind him . . . and let out an incredulous burst of laughter when he saw that the game was playing its normal cut-scene loop, the camera scanning across the candy landscape as the familiar _Insert Quarters _icon flashed at the bottom in magenta letters. His heart pounding faster and his mouth hanging open in a grin of disbelief, Litwak straightened up and set off on a brisk round throughout the arcade, his shocked laughter growing more and more elated with every game that he passed, until finally he had inspected them all and returned to where Carl was still standing with a half-amused, half-annoyed look on his face.

"Ha _ha! _Well what do you know about _that, _Carl . . . isn't this _great?" _he cried jubilantly, grabbing his friend by the shoulders and giving him a single stiff shake. "It's a _miracle! _They're all working . . . they're all working just fine!"

"Yeah, that's . . . ha . . that's what I _told _you," Carl muttered. "Listen, Stan, uh . . . . maybe you should think about taking some time _off, _for a while. I think the stress of running this place might be starting to _get _to you."

"Time _off? _Are you KIDDING?" Litwak roared happily, spreading his arms wide and looking once around the room with a proud, beaming smile. "I'm going to have a grand _reopening _tomorrow morning! If I _ever _had a reason to celebrate in this place, this is it! And _you!" _he added, turning suddenly to the nearby Masterwork console and slapping its side with an affectionate chuckle, "You better get used to it here, missy, because you ain't goin' _anywhere, _now!"

"Aaaahhh . . . yyeaah . . . say, Stan, ah . . . let me take you out for some lunch, huh?" Carl suggested, raising his eyebrows and hooking his mouth in an amused smile as he put one hand on Litwak's shoulders and turned him toward the door. "I think all this excitement is starting to _get_ to you."

Too overwhelmed with happiness and relief to argue, Litwak simply laughed, nodding in agreement and casting one final look of admiration back across the array of glowing screens in his arcade before allowing himself to be steered over to the exit. He turned off the lights and let Carl go out first . . . then hung back for a moment with his keys in hand, smiling at the dim, dusty atmosphere of the room - which hadn't changed an iota since he'd first come in, yet now looked somehow more beautiful than it ever had before.

"_Good to have you back, _everybody," he murmured warmly into the silence . . . then, just as he stepped outside into the sunlight and was about to seal the door shut behind him . . . he heard something.

It was a high, faint, almost imperceptible sound, and by the time Litwak realized he'd heard it, it had already been over for so long that he was half sure he must have imagined it . . . but for one brief, fleeting second, he could have sworn he had heard something like a soft, feminine giggle of excitement coming from somewhere inside the arcade . . .

"Stan? What's the hold-up? Come on, if we hurry we can still make the lunch special at that place I like over in mid-town."

Litwak narrowed his eyes curiously at the dimly lit rows of consoles just a moment longer . . . then shook himself, shrugged, and locked the front doors.

"See you tomorrow," he said with smile, rapping his knuckles once on the glass before reluctantly turning away from his beloved arcade and following Carl back across the parking lot.

* * *

_- Two months later -_

It was ten minutes before noon, and the brilliant, golden rays of late August sunshine were beaming through her kitchen windows when a sudden knock at the front door made Michelangela jump and look up from the pitcher of lemonade she was pouring into glasses, inadvertently splashing half a cup's worth onto the counter-top.

_BUNK, BUNK, BUNK._

Frowning down for a second at the puddle of lemonade, Mike set down the pitcher and shook her wet hands in the air as she hurried over to answer the door, her bare feet tapping briskly on the wood floor and the skirt of her dress whirling around her knees. She swung open the top half of the Dutch doors, squinted up into the sudden brightness of the beautiful day outside . . .

. . . and a pair of small, brown, round eyes blinked back at her.

A broad smile spread across Mike's face, and just as she had opened her mouth to say something, she happened to glance down at the huge expanse of chest obscuring the doorway . . . and she burst out laughing.

Ralph's face dropped immediately into a dark scowl, and he let out a snarl of frustration as he turned on his heel and began stomping back across the yard, being careful not to drop either of the stacks of pies he was balancing in each hand.

"I _knew_it!" he growled. "I'm going home to change . . . I TOLD Felix I looked _stupid _in this . . ."

"No, no, wait . . . Ralph, _wait!" _Mike called after him, barely able to form the words around her breathless giggles as she quickly pushed open the lower half of the door and hurried to catch up with him. She darted in front of him and stopped him with her hands flat on his stomach, and Ralph narrowed his brow unappreciatively down at her. The tall stacks of pink pie-boxes in his hands were tied together with twine so that they looked like two miniature skyscrapers, and he held them slightly out to his sides to pin her with an un-amused stare as she stifled another laugh behind her fist.

"Yeah, _yeah, _very funny," he grumbled. "I am _not _wearing this today, Mike, I look ri_diculous."_

"No, you don't! Honestly, you _don't!" _Mike argued, struggling to keep a straight face as she looked him up and down.

"Yeah? Then why can't you stop _laughing?"_

"Because . . . I've just never _seen _you in anything like this before, that's all!" she answered truthfully, grinning as she reached out and smoothed the wrinkles over his chest with both hands. "You look _handsome _in it, Ralph . . . honestly you do!"

"_Handsome!?" _he parroted incredulously. "Are you kidding me? I look like a six hundred and forty-three pound _gardenia _plant!"

Mike screwed her face up and stood back, holding her chin as she tried to scrutinize his outfit as objectively as possible. Shoeless as usual, he was dressed in a pair of burgundy swim-trunks in place of his overalls, and instead of his usual orange flannel he was clad from the waist up in a short-sleeved, loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt of banana-yellow, covered with a splashy pattern of orange and pink flowers. Ralph began to fidget under her stare, and he sighed as he set the stacks of pies down on the grass and tugged distastefully at the neck of the shirt.

"Felix picked it out for me . . . apparently he's got a matching one in _blue," _he rolled his eyes."I can't wear this, Mike, everyone's just gonna _laugh _at me . . ."

"Oohhh . . . come on, so what if they _do?" _Mike countered, slapping his hand lightly to make him stop pulling at the fabric. "I think you look _perfect, _Ralph_, _I mean it. Besides - you'll just be taking it off anyway as soon as you go in the water, right?"

At that, Ralph's expression shifted. Clearing his throat awkwardly and suddenly seeming as if he were very eager to change the subject, he picked up the pies again and looked around.

"Er . . . rrright . . . so, uh, where do you want these?"

"Over here . . . I've got one table set up for the deserts. Follow me."

Ralph obediently followed her across the grass toward the edge of the shoreline beside her house, where they had spent the previous evening arranging several long picnic tables and chairs borrowed from the Hero's Duty mess hall . . . which turned out looking quite nice, once their scratched and scorch-marked surfaces had been covered up with decorative streamers and tablecloths. As they walked, Mike noticed Ralph in the corner of her eye doing a sudden double-take, looking her up and down as if truly noticing her for the first time since arriving.

"_Wow," _he murmured, coughing lightly under his breath._ "_That's, ah . . . that's a _nice, _uh . . . new thing, you got there."

Mike laughed at his somewhat flushed expression as he looked her up and down, his gaze lingering for a moment at the cinched waist of her party dress. It was cream white with red polka dots and a flared skirt, and she had pulled her hair up into as clean a knot at the base of her neck as she could manage to show off its backless halter top.

"You like it? Calhoun went to Mall of the Dead with me to get it . . . it was the only one in the store without slime stains. You think _this_ is something, wait until you see the _bathing suit _she helped me pick out . . ."

_Clunk!_

Mike jerked her head toward the clumsy noise, and had to hold her breath to keep from laughing again when she saw that Ralph had walked straight into the desert table and nearly knocked it over, his face glowing a brighter shade of red. He hastily dropped the pies onto it and turned away, conspicuously rubbing the back of his neck. When he finally found his voice again, it came out in something of an unusually high-pitched croak.

"You, ah . . . need any more help with things down here? 'Cause . . . if you don't mind, I was gonna maybe, uh . . . go and put some more finishing touches on our gift upstairs . . ."

Mike looked at him, then slumped her shoulders and let out a long exhale.

"Ralph . . . come on, we've been _over _this . . . it looks _great _justthe way it is! If you keep on picking at it, pretty soon there's not going to be anything left . . . part of being an artist is knowing when to _stop working, _you know."

Ralph rolled his eyes as his flush began to fade a bit. "The _artist _card again. Nice," he muttered sarcastically, but not without the hint of a smile. Mike sighed exasperatedly again, but couldn't find the heart to be truly annoyed with him.

"_Fine . . . _we'll go and give it the once-over _one more _time . . . but I'm telling you, _I _think it's finished."

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Several minutes later, after they had both spent a long moment standing with their backs to the window in Mike's sunlit studio and quietly studying the object on the pedestal in the center of the room, Ralph finally tossed his hands in the air with a defeated sigh.

"Well . . . I guess you're right. This is about as good as it's going to get."

"Oh, would you just shut _up?" _Mike snapped, slapping him harmlessly on the arm with the back of her hand. "It looks _amazing! _They're absolutely going to _love it."_

Ralph gave her an unconvinced sideways glance, then turned glumly back to what - from _his _perspective - still looked like a very ill-proportioned, crudely fashioned statue of Calhoun and Felix from the shoulders up. He had spent every night for the last week in Mike's studio slaving over it, pinching off bit by bit of the dark-colored stone ( one of the small boulders taken from the beach outside ) with his fingertips, shaping it the same way he had the tiny brick figures of himself and Vanellope . . . but as far as he could see, even the benefit of Mike's painstaking artistic tutelage didn't seem to have made much of a difference in the end.

"I . . . I just don't _know, _Mike . . . are you _sure _you're not just saying that?"

"_Positive. _Trust me, when it comes to art, everybody is their own worst critic. What have I been telling you all week? You have so much _potential, _Ralph - you just need to keep working at it! . . . and learn not to be so _hard _on yourself. You're going to make a fantastic sculptor one day, I can _see _it."

She nudged him on the arm again, but this time there was an unmistakable affection in the gesture that Ralph couldn't help but feel cheered by. He hooked his mouth in a reluctant smile and tilted his head sideways as he scrutinized his creation once more . . . and as he did, his attention was caught suddenly by a brilliant flash of sunlight reflecting from a square object within his line of vision just beyond it, resting on the bookshelf against the far wall. He tilted his head further to peer around the glare, and felt a strange warmth of serendipitous emotion welling up inside him when he saw that it was the framed picture of Michelangela and Artemisio sitting on the beach. Mike's words almost seemed to repeat themselves suddenly in his ears . . .

. . . _you're going to make a fantastic sculptor one day . . ._

Ralph looked at the picture quietly for another moment, his thoughts beginning to drift elsewhere out of the room . . . then, jolting himself back to reality before he could wander _too_ far away, he picked the statue up off its pedestal and began wrapping it in the clean white cloth lying beside it on the floor.

"Ooh, wait . . . I've got just the thing," Mike snapped her fingers and darted over to one of the wooden filing cabinets against the wall, rummaging in its top drawer until she found a spool of thick red ribbon. She cut off one long piece and tied it around the white parcel in a lop-sided bow, then stood back to admire the effect. "There . . . _now _it's an anniversary present. But . . . are you _sure _you still want it to be from both of us? You did all the work."

"Now who's being too hard on herself?" Ralph teased as he carefully tucked the statue under his arm. "You _designed_ the thing, all I did was follow that sketch you dre - "

But before he could finish speaking, he was suddenly interrupted by the raucous sound of an engine roaring outside, filtering through the open window and shattering the tranquility of the early afternoon. The engine sputtered to a halt, and suddenly from down below came the loud, unceremonious shout of a familiar voice . . .

"What is this . . . a party, or an oil painting? HeLLO? Anybody _here?"_

They both leaned out of the second-story window to peer down in the direction of the noise, and Ralph felt a wide grin spreading involuntarily on his face when he - of course - spotted Vanellope standing beside her new candy-kart in the grass with her hands on her hips, looking around impatiently at the decorated tables.

"UP HERE, President Fuss-Pants," he cupped one hand beside his mouth and called down to her . . . and without a word between them, Mike automatically took the statue in her hands, jumped up into the waiting crook of his arm, and the two of them squeezed through the window and began climbing down the side of the house, Mike giggling as she struggled to keep the breeze from blowing up her skirt and hold onto the statue at the same time. By the time they reached the ground a moment later, Vanellope had waved them off exasperatedly and was working to unpack the load of items tied down to the rear hood of her kart with licorice rope.

As he drew nearer and got a better look at her outfit, Ralph had to stifle what would have been an embarrassing coo of adoration. As was befitting the function, Vanellope had traded her hoodie, skirt and leggings for a candy-striped two-piece bathing suit and shorts . . . but it was the pair of enormous, mirrored aviator sunglasses obscuring half her face that made him unable to hold back his snickering.

Vanellope's ears perked up, and she paused what she was doing to glare at him over her shoulder as he and Mike approached the kart.

"What's so _funny?" _she demanded.

"Nothing . . . _nothing," _Ralph grinned. "I just mistook you for one of your secret-service drones for a minute, there. Nice _shades, _kid."

Vanellope scowled - or at least, he _thought _it was a scowl, as he couldn't see anything past her nose - and stuck her tongue out at him.

"Like _you're_ one to talk there, Big Kahuna. Why don't you two chuckleheads stop staring and give me a _hand _with this_, _already?"

Mike ruffed one hand affectionately through Vanellope's hair - which was tied on one side of her head instead of the top - and grinned at her as she obediently went to the other side of the kart and began untying the licorice knots.

"Well, I think you look _sweet, _Vanellope. Did you remember to bring the cake?"

"No, Chickadee, this is just a huge empty box that I strapped onto the kart here for fun . . . . _yes, _ding-dong, of _course _I brought the cake!" Vanellope chided, but couldn't keep a hint of laughter out of her growl of effort as she heaved the white parcel, nearly twice as large as she was, off of the rear hood. Ralph quickly lifted it out of her arms with one hand, and she let out a groan of relief. _"Here_ . . . I brought the banner, too."

She pointed to the other item on the kart . . . an enormous white strip of taffy rolled up into a ball, which Ralph picked up in his other hand so that Mike could carry their present to the gift table.

"You're _late, _by the way, kid . . . people are gonna start showing up any minute, and we don't we even have this thing strung up yet."

"It's not _my _fault! It's this darn _kart,_" Vanellope retorted, giving the colorful candy machine a gentle kick, taking care not to hit the words _Made_ _by Vanellope and Ralph ( again ) _piped on its side in pink and green frosting. "It doesn't handle anywhere _near _as good as the first one we made."

Ralph gave her a lopsided smile and shrugged as they made their way over to the party area, where Mike was struggling to dig one end of a long wooden pole into the sod for the banner to hang from.

"We gave it our best shot, kid. Can't catch lightning in a bottle twice, I guess."

Vanellope stuck out her bottom lip. "Yeah, well . . . I'm gonna have to soup this thing up with some more candy cylinders, or _something, _because I have _had _it with placing third in every Random Roster Race."

Ralph just chuckled and carefully set down the cake box, then took the wooden pole out of Mike's grasp and rammed it sixteen inches down into the ground with one twist of his hand. She blinked in surprise with her hands hovering in place, a faint glimmer of perspiration having already started at her temple.

"Oh! Ah . . . _thank _you, Ralph. Er . . . would you mind . . . ?"

Ralph obediently picked up the second pole and drove it into the earth on the other side of the cluster of tables. Vanellope and Mike unrolled the taffy banner - with the words _Happy One Year Anniversary Calhoun and Felix _written across it in glittery letters - and carried one end to each of the posts, where Ralph, if he stood on tiptoe, was tall enough to tie them on . . . and when the three of them finally stepped back to observe their handiwork, he had to admit that the place did indeed look remarkably festive.

Shortly after that, the Nicelanders were the next group to arrive, each of them bustling in excitedly with all manner of food, gifts, and other party additions in tow. By the time they had settled in and Ralph had - with no small amount of clumsy fumbling and muttered obscenities under his breath - finally managed to finish setting up the Tiki-torches and volleyball net they had brought, the soldiers from Hero's Duty had arrived . . . more than a baker's dozen of enormous, shirtless, absurdly muscular men all trampling across the Masterwork lawn in their matching black swim trunks like they were preparing to lay siege to the place.

After an obligatory greeting with Kohut, Markowski, and Janowitz, Ralph conveniently made himself scarce for a while, preferring to help Mike with busing trays of lemonade in and out of the house rather than take part in any pre-party mingling. As awkward as the interactions between the Nicelanders and the Hero's Duty soldiers were at first, however ( come to think of it, Ralph wasn't sure if any of them had seen or spoken to each other since the Fix-Its' wedding ), he had to admit that the ludicrous size ratio between the two groups made their conversation - if nothing else - increasingly funny to watch.

Then, when it was nearly two o'clock and the gathering was beginning to grow restless, a sudden cry of jubilation from Lucy alerted everyone to the long-awaited arrival of the two guests of honor. Calhoun and Felix appeared at last from the tunnel on the left, waving excitedly as they began walking across the lawn . . . but they hadn't made it halfway before they were cut off by a veritable swarm of both Nicelanders and soldiers all wanting to be the first to congratulate them. It wasn't until nearly half an hour later when everyone had finally settled down, Janowitz had started up the grill, and Gene had broken out the cocktail shaker that Ralph, Vanellope, Mike and the Fix-Its were able to sit down at a table together, breathing long sighs of relief.

_"Some _party guests, eh?" Ralph murmured only half-sarcastically, flicking the cap off a bottle of root-beer as he watched a few of Calhoun's men who had somehow managed to invent a contact version of volleyball and were currently tearing up huge divots in Mike's lawn while a passel of Niceland spectators alternately gasped and applauded. "I think we might have been better off inviting some _cybugs_ . . ."

Felix, however, who was looking very unlike himself in a pair of Bermuda shorts and miniaturized blue version of Ralph's Hawaiian shirt, didn't seem fazed by the commotion at all, and was beaming around at the tables and decorations with an unflinching smile of contentment.

"Jiminy, _jaminy, _I just . . . I'm just _speechless, _y'all. The place looks _wonderful . . . _it was really _too _generous of you to throw this for us. It means so much to Tammy and I," he said warmly, looking at each of them in turn before slipping one arm affectionately around his wife's shoulders. Calhoun - whose appearance in a black, strapless one piece and white sarong could only be described as dangerously attractive - rolled her eyes slightly, but smiled all the same.

"Yeah . . . I still say we all could have skipped the fuss and just made a night out of it at _Tapper's, _but . . . all the same . . . I suppose it was still awful sweet of you clowns," she agreed, reaching over and giving Mike a light punch on the arm. "Now, if I could only get a _drink, _here, that would be something . . . HEY! O'BRIEN!" she shouted suddenly, making one of her men standing near the row of coolers jump and look up; "HIT ME!"

The soldier saluted and obediently tossed her a cold brown bottle from one of the coolers, which she caught in one hand and slammed open against the table edge. "And I'll say this . . . " she added, pausing to take a heavy swig, " . . . we sure did get some beautiful weather today."

"Shush up, you'll _jinx _it!" Vanellope snapped, only half-jokingly. "This may be our last beach day of the summer, and _I _for one want to make the most of it. Come on, Chickadee . . . let's go hit the water once before lunch is ready!"

Mike let out a snort of surprised laughter and staggered up from her chair as Vanellope grabbed her by the wrist and began yanking her toward the shore.

"Wait, _wait! _I have to go inside and change first!"

"And _speaking _of lunch, I need to go and make sure Janowitz doesn't overcook those burgers. I still want to be able to hear mine mooing," Calhoun murmured, giving Felix a long peck on the cheek before standing up and idling over to the grill. After she had gone, Felix slid one chair to his left to sit beside Ralph, and stared dreamily in the direction she had gone.

"So . . . one whole _year _with Sergeant Space Cadet_, _huh?" Ralph chuckled, nudging his protagonist lightly with his elbow. "How does it feel, brother?"

"Oh, _Ralph," _Felix sighed happily, holding in his chin in both hands and watching as Calhoun talked and laughed animatedly with a few of her men. "I can't even believe it my_self, _sometimes . . . I just don't know how a silly little fella like me could have ever ended up with a dynamite gal like _that."_

Ralph glanced up at Calhoun just in time to see her turn her head aside and spit into the grass, then take another swig of her beer and belch heartily.

"Aaaahh . . . ha ha, _yeah," _he muttered in agreement, trying to keep a straight face. "She's, uh . . . she's a real peach, alright. But . . . seriously . . . _congratulations, _buddy, I mean it. I'm really happy for the two of you."

Felix paused suddenly and sat up straighter, then turned and pinned Ralph with a sly, sideways smile that made him start in his chair.

"What? What's that look for?"

"Oh . . . _nothing," _Felix said coolly, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. "I was just wondering . . . "

"Yeah? Wondering about what?" Ralph murmured, absently lifting the bottle of root-beer to his mouth.

Felix's calm smile didn't even flicker as he looked Ralph straight in the eye and answered, "I was just wondering whether or not I'm going to get to be the best man at _your _wedding."

Ralph snorted with the bottle to his lips and sprayed root-beer across the table. He coughed heavily for a few seconds and thumped himself twice on the chest, then turned to stare at Felix with an expression that he could only hope didn't look as flustered as it felt.

"My . . . . my _what!?"_

Felix laughed and gave him a smack on the arm. "Oh, come _on, _brother, don't be so _shy! _Why, anybody with eyes could see that it's only a matter of time now before you and Mike end up tying the knot! Be honest with me, Ralph . . . have you picked out the ring, yet?"

Ralph blushed, stammering soundlessly for a moment before he could find his voice again.

"Felix, are . . . are you _crazy!? _We've only been dating each other for _two months!"_

His protagonist blew a short raspberry between his lips and waved him off. "So what? I only courted _Tammy _for two months before she and I got married."

"Well . . . _yeah, _but that . . . that was different with you guys, you were both . . . she . . . M-Mike and I are still just . . . we just . . . we're not _r-ready _to - "

Felix cut him with another good-natured chuckle. "Ralph, _Ralph . . . relax, _brother, I'm only pulling your leg. I _know _that you and Michelangela aren't rushing into anything like that."

Ralph let out a long sigh of exasperation and took a heavy swig of his root-beer. Felix was quiet for another moment, then turned to him again with a knowing, meaningful smile.

"But you _are _in love with her. That much is obvious."

Ralph flushed slightly again, trying not to make eye contact with his protagonist. Even after two months of he and Mike officially 'dating,' he still found himself getting awkward and tongue-tied whenever he had to talk to anyone about her in a romantic way.

"Well, I . . . well . . . . _yeah . . . of course I am," _he finished in a deep-throated murmur, lowering his voice so that no one else around them could hear.

Felix gave a satisfied smile and patted him once more on the arm.

"It'll get easier, Ralph, don't worry. I was a little shy too when Tammy and I were first starting out."

Ralph rolled his eyes and was about to open his mouth to mutter a sarcastic reply when he happened to glance over in the direction of the house and saw something that made the breath catch in his throat like a cotton-ball.

For the last five minutes, Vanellope had been waiting impatiently on the front step while Mike was inside changing . . . when the Dutch doors finally opened and Mike re-emerged, she let out a cackle of excitement and seized her by the wrist again to pull her toward the beach . . . but for a split-second before they began running, Mike was standing on the front step of the house with her eyes closed and her hands behind her head, absently pinning up a few curly strands of her hair that had fallen loose . . . for a split-second, time seemed to stop, and Ralph sat there staring at her from across the yard with his mouth half-open.

She had changed out of the polka-dotted party dress and was wearing her new bathing suit . . . the first _real _bathing suit she had ever worn. She and the rest of them had gone swimming at the Masterwork beach numerous times that summer already, but before she had always just worn her red bandeau and a pair of her usual leggings cut off at the knees . . . and even _that _had been a little difficult for Ralph to keep from gaping at too obviously . . . but _this . . . ._

_This tiny, bright green two-piece that almost matched the color of her eyes, with cord bows tied on either side of her little hips and a cord halter loop that accentuated her long, pale neck . . . and with her hair gathered up at the back of her head like that . . ._

Felix stood up on his chair and snapped his fingers in front of Ralph's face, and he gave a hearty jerk as if he were pulling out of a trance. Vanellope and Mike raced down to the shoreline, and the next moment they were both laughing and splashing each other competitively in knee-deep water. His heart practically pounding, Ralph glanced embarrassedly at Felix from the corner of his eye and was dismayed to see his protagonist looking back at him with a smile that said he clearly understood everything much too well.

"Like I _said, _brother . . . don't worry. It get's _easier."_

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"I think this may be one of the _worst _sunsets I've ever seen," Mike murmured with a soft, sardonic chuckle.

Vanellope sighed. "Yeah, well . . . I _told _you dopes not to jinx the weather."

"Hey . . . if anything, I think this may be a _blessing," _Calhoun countered from his other side, shifting to slide her left arm behind Felix's back. "Maybe if we get a little rain, the party will clear out sooner and we can have some time to our_selves."_

Ralph chuckled, glancing first up at the gray, watery-looking clouds that were gradually filling the sky and blotting out the sun as it sank lower toward the horizon . . . then back over his shoulder at the rest of the party guests still mingling at the tables behind them.

It had taken a couple hours, but by now the Hero's Duty soldiers and the Nicelanders had practically become best friends . . . after an entire afternoon and evening of eating, drinking, swimming, playing incredibly one-sided games of chicken or volleyball, watching the Fix-Its open scores of anniversary presents ( including Ralph's statue, at which Felix became so emotional that he actually began to tear up a bit ) eating again, and drinking again, the mismatched groups of characters were talking and laughing as if they'd known each other intimately for years. Gene and Kohut had started singing the Mario theme song horrifically off-key, and the later into the evening it grew the more blatantly Deanna was beginning to flirt with private Davisson.

It was only a few minutes ago that he and others had finally broken away from the festivities and sat down together on the grass at the edge of the shoreline, each still wearing their bathing suits and dangling their legs over the side of the dune. Vanellope was perched on his knee, Mike leaning up against his right side with her slightly-damp hair starting to tickle his underarm. Despite the waning intensity of the sun, the heat and humidity in the air had not yet abated, and Ralph had, somewhat reluctantly, elected to not put his shirt back on. He had been rather reluctant to take it off in the first place, in fact . . . being surrounded by so many soldiers with sculpted, Adonis-like physiques had made him once more painfully overly-conscious of his own, somewhat more _corpulent _bulk . . . but after several heavy doses of encouragement and reassurance from Mike, he had finally given in and gone swimming with the rest of them.

"I don't know about the rest of you, gang, but I haven't had this much fun at a party in _years," _Felix remarked contentedly, snuggling closer beside his wife as they watched the darkening horizon. "This sure was one heck of a first anniversary."

"Just you _wait, _Fix-It . . . the occassion's not over _yet_," Calhoun added with a puckish grin, leaning over and planting a surprise kiss on her husband.

Vanellope made a disgusted gargling noise in the bottom of her throat.

"Ugh, you _guys _. . . are you _trying _to gross me out? And _you _two . . . don't go getting any _ideas_," she shot a threatening look over her shoulder at Ralph, then Mike.

Ralph hesitated, thinking quietly for a moment . . . then, with a devious smile suddenly hooking his mouth, he lowered his head down slowly until it was hovering just beside Vanellope's . . . then murmured in a calm, innocent voice . . .

"_Ideas, _huh? You mmeeeann, ideas like . . . _THIS?" _and before she had time to duck out of the way, he had leaned forward and mashed his lips onto Vanellope's chubby cheek in a loud, sloppy, inescapable kiss.

Mike and Felix burst out laughing . . . Vanellope spluttered and flailed her arms ineffectively, glowering at him when he finally pulled away . . . but after a moment, she gave in and just rolled her eyes at him with an exasperated smile.

"Thanks a _lot, _Stinkbrain, now I'm going to smell like - "

_Drap._

_Drap._

_Drap._

Vanellope stopped in mid-sentence, tilting her head back and looking up as first one, then two, then a flurry of raindrops suddenly pattered down in the sand . . . and the next moment, without another second's warning the heavens opened up and an incredible downpour was thundering all around them. A chorus of startled cries rose up from the other party guests, and they all began knocking over chairs and Tiki-torches in their flustered haste to scramble into Mike's house.

This time, Calhoun was the one to burst out laughing . . . whipping her already drenched hair out of her eyes, she jumped to her feet and took a few steps down the beach, pausing to peer back at the others through the sheets of pounding rain.

"Well? Come_ on, _kids . . . is this our last beach day of the summer, or _isn't it?" _she grinned, then ran the rest of the way down the shore and plunged bravely into the darkening water.

Vanellope let out a whoop of excitement as she sprang from Ralph's lap. "Now _that's _what I'm talking about! Wait for me, Captain Crazy!" she hollered, cackling and sprinting after her. At the last minute, she leapt straight into the air and landed in the water beside Calhoun with a splashing cannon-ball that could scarcely be seen through the thickness of the cloudburst.

Felix sighed, then shook his head, chuckling, and followed them calmly down to the shoreline.

Ralph and Mike looked at each other blankly, their hair plastered down over their foreheads and streams of water running steadily from their chins . . . and smiled.

There was a sudden _crash_ from the direction of the house, half-muted by the sound of the rain, as rowdy party guests were corralling themselves inside Mike's dining room. Some of Calhoun's men were having difficulty squeezing through the front doorway, and through one of the kitchen windows they could see at least three Nicelanders already dancing and swaying haphazardly on the counter-top.

Mike stared speechlessly for a moment at the unruly scene, then looked back at Ralph, covered her mouth with her hand, and nearly choked on her own sputtering laughter. Ralph snickered and gently pulled her hand down again, leaning toward her until their foreheads touched and he could feel her breath, close and hot against his face as the rain continued to thunder down on his bare back and shoulders.

"I don't know, Mike . . . " he grinned, whispering just loudly enough for her to hear him over the downpour. "Now that Masterwork isn't going anywhere, you're in this for the _long haul_ . . . . and believe you me, after thirty years or so, it can get to be a _long, long haul. _You sure you're _up _for it?"

For another moment, Mike just looked back at him silently . . . her freckled cheeks flushed with warmth, her green eyes shining through the dim light as raindrops trickled in rivers down the sides of her face. Then, leaning forward and closing the gap between them, she pressed her lips against his in a soft, sweet, single kiss . . . then sat back again.

"Come on, Ralph," she smiled, laying her small hand over his. "As long as I have _you _with me . . . how bad could it be?"

_**The End**_


End file.
